The Gathering Darkness
by TheLastEidolon
Summary: The Council races stumble upon the Sol system and its occupants. Amidst trying to decipher the...unusual technology employed by the humans, they learn that the denizens of Earth are fighting a desperate war against an enemy so powerful, even the combined might of the Council's armies may not be enough to defeat it...
1. Beautiful Carnage

Doctor and archaeologist extraordinaire Liara T'soni was feeling nervous.

Her unease might have had something to do with the fact that the ship she and a few dozen others were sharing at the moment was a prototype Turian design, never before flown on a long mission until now. It's not that she didn't trust the Turians, they were more than competent designers when it came to spacecraft, and she'd be lying if she said she didn't care for the look and feel to it: Long, sleek, and constructed to use limited space in an efficient yet stylish manner. It's just that, given what little she overheard of the near-indecipherable jargon emanating from the young Quarian in charge of engineering, Tali'Zorah, the ship's drive core and main functions were incredibly complex, and given the untested nature of the vessel itself, accidents were bound to happen.

The anxious feeling gnawing the Asari's gut may have also stemmed from the Council's latest bright idea of ordering this particular mission to be jointly operated by a multi species crew, in order to "Foster a stronger bond between the galaxy's many races, and bring our kinds closer together", or some other nonsense. Under normal circumstances, this would hardly be a problem, given the fact that interaction between Council races was fairly frequent. The trouble with this situation was the Krogan clan leader who joined the mission after the Asari councilmember curiously suggested it. Cooping up Salarians and Turians in the same ship with a Krogan on a mission with an indeterminate end was a recipe for disaster, not to mention that fact that the ship happened to be named after the bloodiest battle in Turian history. Which was fought against the Krogans. In the Turian's defense, they might have named it something else had they known a Krogan would be a part of its maiden voyage. And while the Quarian engineer certainly seemed capable, many people looked down upon Quarians as being roving, thieving vagabonds. She would withhold judgment, mainly because she had never met one for herself until now, and could only hope others would be as open-minded.

While low in quantity, Liara was convinced that the severity of the problems that faced this expedition more than explained her worry. She did her best stop her mind from fretting about what _could_ happen, and instead get her body to start working toward making what _should_ happen, happen.

The makeshift office set up for her was surprisingly spacious, given the more military aspect of the _Digeris_. Given the nature of the primary objective for this little trip, however, she supposed it did make sense. Taking a moment to stretch and work out the kinks in her muscles, Liara rolled her chair forward to the console on her desk, and began to reread the mission briefing and parameters: Volus merchant vessel outbound from Palaven experienced unexpected FTL drive core malfunctions, was forced out of light speed near an unexplored region of space. They detected a weak, unknown signal that suggested possible intelligent life, was unwilling to risk precious cargo to investigate further. It all seemed very run-of-the-mill, save for that mystery signal. It was uniquely separate from any other signal used by any known race, and it was so faint, Tali submitted that, barring an existing, primitive culture discovering inter-system transmitting for themselves, it was likely an antique, dying transmitter set to ping automatically, suggesting the possibility of ruins from a previous civilization, hence Doctor T'soni's reason for being here. The chance to uncover and learn from untouched remains of a previously unheard of race excited her immensely. What was their physiology like? What kind of art, architecture, and literature did they produce? What was the reason behind their extinction? Countless more questions buzzed around in her mind, but she did her best to calm them down. She hadn't even seen the planet that these ruins _might_ be on, if they even existed.

Her thoughts on the subject were halted by a deep, gravelly voice originating from her omnitool.

"We're about 5 minutes out Doctor, figured you'd want to be up at the cockpit for when we drop out of FTL."

"Yes, thank you, Captain Vakarian." She replied, "Are we picking up that errant signal?"

"We are, but it's even weaker now than when the Volus first intercepted it. Tali's convinced whatever is making the signal is on its dying breath." The Captain said, a slight warble in in his Turian vocal chords she couldn't decipher.

 _Could be nervous, like me. Or excited. It's hard to tell with Turians._ She mused, headed past the ship's galley toward the elevator that would take her to the large second floor that housed the cockpit, among other things.

"Also, Captain, I keep telling you, you don't have to call me Doctor. I may have the degree, but many Asari still consider me young enough to be a child, so please, call me Liara." She said into her omnitool.

"Nonsense, you spent decades working to earn that title, the least you could do is wave it around." He replied, a hint of amusement in his voice, "Not like you can do much else with it…"

"Excuse me?" she questioned, angrily.

His resonating laughter echoed from the glowing device on her arm, "I'm just messing with you, Liara. Now hurry up and get your blue butt up here, we'll be dropping out of FTL any time now."

She glared at nothing in particular as the drab grey metal walls slowly slid past her view as the elevator continued to rise. The captain of the _Digeris_ was quite entertaining to be around, but Liara believed he could be too informal at times, though she would admit that she enjoyed his company, his relaxed stance on most things aside.

The smooth stop to the rising elevator floor let her know she had arrived at her destination, the doors making a faint hissing noise as they slid apart, allowing the doctor passage into the bustling, organized chaos that was the Command Deck. Various crewmembers scrambling around, or focused intently on the blinking lights of the consoles in front of them, all making sure that the _Digeris_ was running at peak efficiency. It reminded Liara that, as un-Turian as Garrus Vakarian might be, he still expected nothing less than excellence from his crew.

Stepping up to the cockpit, Liara found that the captain had beat her there, the much taller Turian taking up the space immediately behind the pilot's chair, staring out the viewport. He turned and nodded in her direction when he noticed her arrival.

"Doctor." He said in greeting, either forgetting their previous conversation already, or simply having decided that he was going to call her that.

"Captain." She returned the greeting, her eyes moving past his scarred face as she took in the mosaic mess of color that was FTL travel.

"To think, all this time, so much expansion, yet we never realized there was a completely unexplored system of planets right in our backyard. With the admittedly slight potential for intelligent life, no less." Garrus thought aloud.

"When you're wrapped up in the big affairs of an even bigger galaxy, it's easy to miss the little thing that's right in front of you."

Garrus' mandibles tilted in the equivalent of a Turian smirk, and replied, "How very insightful of you. Shall we add Philosopher to your ever-expanding repertoire of job titles?"

The Asari gave him an unamused stare, then decided to give in to temptation and meet his remark with a little barb of her own.

"That's a lot of big words for you, captain. Have you been socializing with our resident Salarian medical officer too much?"

Garrus tilted his head back in laughter, "See? Now you're getting it. Great fun, antagonizing people, did it all the time back in C-Sec." A thoughtful expression replaced his jovial one. "To be honest, though, that may have been the reason most C-Sec people didn't like me."

Liara merely grinned and shook her head. Very un-Turian indeed.

The playful atmosphere quickly dissipated when Liara heard heavy, measured footsteps behind her. She held in a gasp as she whirled around to face clan leader Urdnot Wrex.

While the large hump on his back gave him an almost hunched over appearance, the Krogan stood even taller than Garrus, and also sported a bulkier, more powerful build. Deep scars traced from the right side of his neck to past his jaw, over his eye, ending at the beginning of the bright red crest adorning his head, where several other old wounds traced horizontally across his upper forehead. When he spoke, his voice was similar to Garrus', though where Garrus had an avian-like trill to his speech Wrex possessed a deeper tone, more akin to rolling thunder.

"We're almost there?" he drawled, the deep bass of his voice almost making it difficult for Liara to decipher his words.

"Yes, and I'm glad you're here, Battlemaster. You'll be part of the team that goes down planet side should we detect anything interesting." Garrus says smoothly, no hint of caution or nervousness.

Wrex's reptilian eyes narrowed, "You sure you want a Krogan to be part of that group? Even with the chance of making first contact?"

"I trust you won't start shooting without good reason." Was Garrus' firm reply. Whether he was being sincere, or vaguely threatening, Liara couldn't say.

Before the conversation went any further, the lavender skinned Asari pilot spoke.

"Dropping out of FTL in 3…2…1…"

Garrus brought his gaze back to the reinforced cockpit window where the blur of color outside flashed briefly, then quickly vanished as it was replaced by a most unusual sight.

Where stars or planets might have been expected, the individuals facing the front viewport were treated to a scenic vista of a massive ship graveyard. Where the inky void of space was expected, the space around the hulking masses of ruined metal had a strange bluish-grey hue to it. A harsh sun shed light all around, its rays burning through what almost looked like clouds in space, somewhat akin to a nebula, but not quite the same.

Liara was struck speechless by the sight. The seemingly endless sea of decimated ships was tragic, yet that tragedy was mingled with the natural beauty of this particular patch of void. It was the kind of thing poets and musicians wrote about.

"Must've been one hell of a battle here." The Krogan Battlemaster says approvingly.

Liara held back a sigh. She supposed not everyone could appreciate such things.

"Are the stealth systems engaged?" Garrus asked the pilot, more concerned about keeping a low profile, in case someone was in the area.

"Yes sir, stealth systems are engaged, and holding steady. We're running silent, no signs of detection." The pilot replied, then added, "Just so you know sir, it's gonna be difficult for us to pin down a potential threat in this graveyard. A low-powered ship could hide itself just as well as our fancy stealth drive core can hide us."

The captain nodded curtly, "Noted." He said, "Take us through slowly, her kinetic barriers are tough, but there's no need to push _Digeris_ to her limits here." The pilot acknowledged his order, and began skillfully maneuvering the ship through the countless wrecks.

Garrus turned to the other occupants of the cockpit. "I guess we can safely say there's something in this system worth exploring. I'd tell you two to get ready and gear up, but it looks like that's been taken care of." Garrus smirked to himself. While the Asari and Krogan in front of him had very different motivations, they both had their reasons for wanting to get off the ship and plant their boots in the dirt. Or snow. Or whatever terrain they encountered.

"Will it be just the three of us, then?" Liara asked, feigning nonchalance. In truth she didn't really care for the idea of potentially playing Turian-Krogan diplomat.

"Looks like it." Garrus confirmed, either unaware of her unease, or deciding not to acknowledge it, "I'm sure our savvy engineer would love to try and figure out whatever tech our mystery race might have had, but I'll need her to remain onboard, in case the stealth drive core decides to misbehave." Garrus squeezed past his soon to be squadmates to exit the cockpit. "Hang out here, or in the shuttle bay, I don't mind. Not much to do until we locate a suitable planet to investigate. I'll be in the armory, need to calibrate the scope on my sniper rifle."

The Krogan was already on his way to follow the captain's example and vacate the cockpit, when Liara lightly grabbed his shoulder.

"Wrex" she blurted, then, collecting herself, continued in a calm manner, "Regardless of what people may think of your kind, I just want you to know that I don't have any reservations about working alongside you. I have no doubt you will do all you can to fight should we encounter any trouble." She said earnestly.

The Battlemaster's face was inscrutable, his eyes holding Liara's unwavering, though clearly nervous gaze. After a handful of seconds, he inclined his head toward the Asari. "Appreciate it, Doc. Looking forward to seeing you in the field. Even though we'll probably be standing around looking at dusty relics." He said, continuing his walk toward the center of the ship.

Liara let out a breath he didn't know she was holding. It wasn't exactly a pact of friendship, though she seriously doubted Krogans were inclined toward such a thing, but she would take what she could get.

Uldren Sov was furious.

His heavy footfalls echoed through the large chamber as he nearly stomped his way across the narrow catwalk to his sister's throne, long, narrow glow rods attached vertically to either side of the path to offer some illumination. While the Queen's body language atop her decadent seat suggested she was relaxed, her eyes remained sharp and alert, the pale orbs fixed on her brother as he approached.

" _Why"_ he practically growled through gritted teeth, "why did you order my men to stand down? They had a perfect shot to eliminate the threat!" he all but shouted, unable to comprehend why she, of all people would be so careless with the security of the Reef.

The Queen didn't respond right away, instead offering him little more than a tilt of her head and a raised eyebrow before saying, "A ship far larger than anything we possess drops in from beyond the borders of the Reef, outfitted with technology we do not understand, filled with aliens that we have likely never met, and the first thing that comes to your mind is destruction." She gives him a mocking smile. "How unimaginative."

Uldren turned to yell incoherently, his vocalized anger reverberating throughout the throne room. Whipping back around to point a finger at his sister, he says, "Do you realize the position you put me in? My task, above all others, is to maintain the safety of our borders. How am I supposed to do that when the only person who outranks me tells me to _not_ do my job?"

Feeling some sympathy for her kin, she explains, "As I expected, they moved on. These beings may have technology beyond our own, but the Darkness shielded us from their sight. Your first priority is indeed the safeguarding of our realm, and it remains safe. Whoever these newcomers are, they will likely meet the Guardians soon."

"Assuming they don't get torn apart by the Fallen or the Hive." Uldren mutters, still fuming, but nevertheless understanding the Queen's reasoning.

"That is also a possibility." She concedes, as she leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees. "That is why you will follow them, rather than attack them."

Uldren was taken aback. "My pilots had little trouble staying hidden in the graveyard, they'd stick out like sore thumbs anywhere else." He reasoned.

"They will just have to keep their distance. A vessel that large in a system this small will be far more noticeable than a sore thumb. Even with its ability to make no detectable noise, I believe that this alien ship will not be able to hide forever." The Queen stands and slowly walks toward Uldren before gently placing a hand on his shoulder. "Please do not think that my actions today insinuate that I have no trust in you, brother." Her soothing voice intoned, "Sometimes I have plans even you are not aware of."

He let out a theatrical sigh, "Fair enough, your Majesty." He said, before bowing at the waist, then turned to leave the chamber." I'll send my best men to try and keep an eye on that alien ship. Any information they gather will go straight to you."

"That is all that I ask, Uldren."


	2. Welcome to the Neighborhood

Two small, nimble craft made their way through the empty expanse of space, the normally swift one-manned, tri-winged fighters keeping their traveling pace subdued, the better to avoid unwanted detection by their mysterious new friends. The awoken piloting one of the agile ships kept double and triple checking the status lights across his control panel, ensuring his fuel count was still good, confirming that the seal around his cockpit remained solid, and overall making sure that he would have nothing to worry about beyond making sure their target stayed more or less within signal range. The method by which they were able to track the otherwise undetectable ship was a trick they had learned from the Hive. Where traditional tracking methods scanned for heat or energy readings, the Hive would release microscopic spores that would latch on to ships, allowing them to 'smell' the vessel they intended to follow. In a similar fashion, the Reef had several locations where nanites were located in small clouds, the tiny machines now hitching a ride through the solar system on the unknown ship. The nanites were easy to miss unless you knew what to scan for, but even so, the Awoken pilots were wary, lest the unknowns had a way of discovering their presence.

He brought his mind to the final thing on his checklist, as he opened and re-sealed the small compartments containing various dehydrated foodstuffs, the edibleness of which being very much debatable, in his opinion. Food would eventually become a problem, the cramped fighter not boasting much in the way of storage, but as long as they rationed it properly, they could manage for up to a week, if necessary, at which time they would FTL back to the Reef, which would send an automatic transmission to the other two pilots standing by back home, who would then take up the mantle of tailing the sort-of stealth ship.

He mulled on that fact, wondering how much good a silent ship would do. Sure, entering a system without tripping any possible alarm sensors would have some value, and a competent captain could even slip by some patrols if he or she didn't feel like fighting. But surely, anyone nearby could simply look out a window and see it for themselves. Given the potential resources and money involved with tech as complex as nullifying a ship's energy emissions, especially one that big, wouldn't making many sturdy, adequate ships be preferable to making one incredibly complicated vessel?

His contemplation was cut short by his comm bursting to life, throwing the crackling sound of static around the tight confines of his fighter.

"Razor two to Razor one, are you there?"

"Yes, I am here, Razor two." He sighed, "Turn your head to the left a bit, and you could see me."

"Funny," the other pilot muttered. A slight pause ensued before he continued, "What do you think of the odds are of these guys surviving out here?"

Razor one pondered the question, but a sudden thought sprang to his mind, and, checking his comm settings, spoke harshly back into the mic, "Are you tight-beaming this to me?"

A loud sigh brought more static through his headset, "Yes, I double checked the comm before I started using it, there's no way they can hear this….So? Odds?" the other Awoken pressed.

He turned his thoughts back to the question. "Can't be sure." He decided, after some hesitation. "The Vex are obviously a major problem, no matter who you are, though with Atheon gone, they seemed to have withdrawn somewhat, then again, who's to say they don't have a thousand more like Atheon? Hive's a wildcard, Crota's death may have ruined that particular offensive, but even when hit hard like that, they rarely seem to do anything more than slow down a bit. If they pass by Venus like I think they are, they'll have to deal with Fallen patrols. We both know how much they'd love to tear that ship apart piece by piece, and strip it of anything even remotely valuable. But with those damn traitors from the House of Wolves so utterly defeated, the other houses don't seem as eager for a fight as they used to."

The second pilot interrupted, "Do you think that signal on Venus was a Guardian?"

He paused his exposition, "More than likely." he confirmed, "The signal appeared to be the human's Morse code, just random beeps timed to signify certain letters, but the fact that it's looped for so long, and is somehow boosted to reach much further than any standard comm unit can reach, is unusual. The Guardians are trying to get to it, but rumor is the Fallen have nearly doubled their patrols on and around Venus, probably going mad, trying to pin that transmission down."

 _We're picking that signal up all the way from the Reef. Wonder if it could be the reason behind the appearance of these strangers?_ He mused to himself

He collected his thoughts, before concluding his previous speech with, "The Cabal would likely be the worst thing for them to face. Those massive mounds of muscle would use their dreadnoughts to pound that ship into oblivion. Heh, lucky for them, Mars is well out of the way of their current trajectory. If they had dropped in right on top of the Exclusion Zone…"

His wingman decided to finish that thought, "If they had dropped in on top of the Exclusion Zone, we'd be learning what we could about them through whatever debris the Cabal wouldn't completely annihilate."

A cold laugh slipped past Razor one's lips. "You're not wrong, my friend."

"Hundred coins says they don't make it past Venus." His friend said confidently.

"Alright, I'll take that bet. Who knows, they might get lucky." He responded.

A silence pervaded their comms for a few moments, before Razor two spoke again. "How much use is stealth tech if your ship is still visible?"

The first pilot's eyebrows scrunched together slightly, humming his agreement. "I was thinking the same thing a little while ago, it may have some merit in specific scenarios, but overall, I feel as though it's not that helpful if someone can step up to a window and still see you."

A short quiet met that statement. Then Razor two spoke, "Do Fallen ships have windows?" he wondered.

"I…" the first pilot started, donning a frown of heavy thinking, "…I think they do. Yes…Yes, I believe they do." He finished, gaining confidence in his knowledge of Fallen ship design.

His confirmation was quickly met with another question. "How much do you want to bet?"

[][][][][][][]

Liara shifted in her seat at the conference table, somewhat on edge from wearing her field gear for so long yet still stuck on the ship. The tough but flexible blue and white mesh was far from uncomfortable, she had simply underestimated the amount of time it would take to get her feet planet side and finally feel at least a little bit helpful to this venture. She had a sneaking suspicion that the armor-clad Krogan to her right felt the same.

A part of her was able to admit that she had gotten ahead of herself, suiting up so early, then subconsciously assuming time would magically speed up so that she could start digging through the dirt and potentially discover things that nobody had ever seen before. Nobody from Council space, anyway. As she had told the captain, her work was not usually well received, primarily due to her age, and she'd be damned if she didn't try to change that. You shouldn't have to be as old as the ruins you were studying in order for your work to be respected, you don't have to be _this_ old before you become _that_ smart. Was it so hard a concept to grasp?

Her train of thought derailed when she saw Captain Vakarian enter the conference room at a brisk pace, his mandibles arraigned in a way that Liara recognized as a grin. Her eyes narrowed. Had someone in the hallway just told him a joke, or was he excited about something? Again, so difficult to read Turians.

"This shouldn't take too long," Garrus started, addressing Liara, Wrex, and the small handful of officers filling up the remaining seats at the table, "but some things have come up that you all should be aware of." Garrus stepped up to the side of the conference table, then used a gloved finger to tap out a sequence of keys which emitted a soft chime through the room, signifying that the captain's voice would be heard throughout the _Digeris_.

"Attention all crewmembers," he said. "this is Captain Vakarian speaking. I've recently received confirmation that our long range sensors have detected power signatures orbiting the second-most planet from this system's star." He paused, quite possibly for dramatic effect, Liara thought.

"Power signatures large enough to potentially be active ships." He finished, the trill in his voice clearly displaying his excitement to the other Turians in the room.

Liara's eyes went wide, her mouth hanging open. Passing through that immense ship graveyard, which they had estimated to be at least a century old, she had figured they would be studying what remained of a lost civilization. But active ships? So there was indeed a supposedly unknown race residing in this system, who clearly possessed some form of spaceflight, yet we had never encountered them before?

 _Maybe there's no mass relay in this system,_ she reasoned, _that could explain why they've never approached us._

"Now, we should try not to get our hopes up _too_ high. There is a possibility that these signatures belong to scavengers, or pirates from our corner of the galaxy who found this system, and kept it secret. Working under the assumption that these are unknown vessels, this announcement is to tell everyone that you have all potentially become ambassadors for your respective races in this unexplored region of space."

The captain took a breath, then continued, "Any behavior exhibited to this and any other race encountered in this system should be polite, respectful, and above all, careful. We need to avoid any chance of causing an intergalactic incident. We will, of course, defend ourselves as necessary, but if a fight breaks out, it will _not_ be because of anything we did."

Liara cringed when some of the officers present glanced not-so-subtly in Wrex's direction. She avoided doing the same, lest he think she too was looking at him in disdain, so she could only hope that he wasn't overly angered by the reproachful stares.

Garrus hit a button that shut down the ship-wide channel, then planted his fists on the table and leaned into it.

"That was the first part." He began, "The second part is something our head engineer found." He brought up his omnitool, bright orange light wreathing his left arm. "Tali'Zorah, can you read me?"

"Yes, Captain." The Quarian said. "Is everybody ready?"

"Let's hear it." Garrus affirmed.

"Okay, I finished digitally reconstructing a number of those wrecks from the graveyard we traveled through." Liara could hear faint beeping alongside Tali's words, the Quarian likely manipulating something on her omnitool as she was speaking. "A few of them were actually pretty easy, since some of the ships were still surprisingly intact, and the rest weren't that much harder when I realized the majority of the crafts shared a similar design pattern. I can't definitively say this, but I'd bet that most if not all the ships we were able to scan from that graveyard belonged to the same race or faction."

Garrus turned his arm so his omnitool was pointed palm upward, which allowed a 3-D image of a ship to float above is hand, before being replaced by others. Most of them appeared to be larger, bulkier vessels, and while they were certainly alien ships to her, Liara couldn't help but think they looked rather…mundane. Maybe she had simply become accustomed to the smooth, almost organic design of the _Digeris_.

"In case those models don't show it, these ships were big, easily dreadnought sized, by our standards." Tali continued, "But since a lot of them had their insides exposed, I was about to see that most of them had what appears to be some kind of large communal area at the center of each vessel."

"Communal areas…" one of the Asari officers thought aloud. "Colony ships?"

"That would be my guess as well." Tali confirmed.

Liara grimaced. "So we didn't witness the aftermath of a battle." She said, her eyes meeting the other officers, "we passed through the site of a terrible massacre."

Garrus nodded grimly. "That would seem to be the case."

One of the lower ranking Turian officers leaned forward. "If we could only detect remains of colony ships from one race in that graveyard, what destroyed them?" he asked.

"That's the strange part." Tali admitted after a slight pause. The ship models hovering about Garrus' omnitool blinked out, to be replaced by still shots of various pieces of the wrecks.

"Take a look at these images. Does anything seem odd to any of you?" the Quarian asked.

Confused looks were passed back and forth, unsure of what the tech genius was getting at, before a voice to Liara's right rumbled,

"No burn marks." Wrex said, his first words since sitting down.

Liara nearly jumped in her seat. Wrex's voice was deep enough to be described as 'powerful' and it caught her off guard after he had gone so long without saying anything.

"Exactly!" Tali exclaimed, "Virtually every weapon, especially energy weapons, leave some kind of carbon scoring when they hit. And yet, aside from being ripped apart, the exteriors of the destroyed vessels are practically pristine, no evidence of any kind of weapon impacts."

"What are you getting at?" another Turian asked.

"She's getting at the fact that, if the race that caused those wrecks to clog that area is still around," Garrus answered, "they'll likely have weapons that are very different from ours. As I said to the rest of the crew, we're not here to start a war, but if somebody wants a fight, we need to be ready."

Everyone nodded their affirmation. Satisfied, Garrus shut off his omnitool after murmuring a quick 'thank you' to Tali. Liara was about to join the other officers filing out the door when she noticed Wrex was still seated.

"Is there something wrong, Wrex?" she questioned, tentatively, remembering the less-than-kind looks he had been given during the meeting.

"That last image." He said absently.

Garrus, who had been just about to leave the room, heard what Wrex had said, and turned back to face him. "What about it?" he asked, bringing his omntitool back up to display the aforementioned still.

Wrex lifted himself out of his chair, eyes intent on what the omnitool was showing. "See that?" he drawled, his thick finger pointing to where a large ship had been severed into two halves. "Fissure marks, all the way down the hull where it split. Looks like a giant hand reached down and tore it in half like a toy." He concluded.

Liara's sky blue face became more of a baby blue as the blood drained from her features. He was right, it really did look like some huge being stretched its arm out and crushed the ship with one hand. Garrus also looked suitably disturbed.

"I'm not sure I like the implications of that…" He said warily.

"Sir!" an emphatic voiced started from Garrus' omnitool, causing Liara to jump. "We've closed in on the designated planet, and those power sigs are confirmed active ships, no known designs match their silhouette."

"Are we within comm range?" Garrus asked excitedly.

"Just about, sir." The voice replied. "You probably want to get up to the cockpit, sir."

"Garrus looked up at Liara and Wrex, all signs of worry born of the previous conversation gone from his face.

"Ready to make history?"

[][][][][][][]

Having finished her exposition, Tali'Zorah went back to her duties, which mainly consisted of making sure the stealth drive core didn't experience a major meltdown. The captain had naturally gone to her when he wanted those ships reconstructed. Her being Quarian, she was quite knowledgeable in many spacecraft designs. She had been able to complete that assignment in her spare time, while still keeping a watchful eye on the drive core. While she hadn't been a part of the group who had developed the experimental core, as much as she would have _loved_ that, it didn't take her long to learn the ins and outs of the complex device. It made sense, how the internal emission sinks stored up the heat generated by the ships propulsion, how this system was unusable during FTL travel, since the heat generated during that time was too much for the heat sinks to handle, how the sinks had to be dumped every 2-3 hours, or the crew would get cooked alive. Speaking of which…

"Warning. Heat levels critical. Advise emptying of internal emission sinks immediately." A monotone voice droned rom one of the consoles.

"Keelah!" Tali cursed, her tri fingered hands tapping furiously at the console, trying to think of some way to at least slow the heat buildup in order to avoid having to vent the heat.

"We can't risk the heat building up any further!" her Salarian assistant exclaimed, seeing what she was attempting to do.

The lack of options vexed Tali, but she relented, cleared the sinks of all heat, then fired up her omnitool to let Garrus know what happened.

"Captain, I'm sorry." She said, "I couldn't keep the stealth system running any longer. We should be able to re-activate it within the next 30 minutes or so, but unless we move from this area soon, it won't matter much. Venting the heat will have revealed us to anybody nearby."

"Thank you, Tali." Garrus sighed, "Well, we knew we couldn't stay in stealth mode forever." He brought his attention the pilot in front of him. "Have we received any messages from the unknowns?"

"Negative, but they have definitely noticed us. I've got a group of three headed our direction." She turned to face him. "We'll be in range to send out a greeting in about a minute or so, Captain."

"That signal still transmitting?" Garrus asked.

"Yes, it's definitely coming from the somewhere on the far side of that planet, though now that we're closer, it looks like it's being bounced all over the place down there. No way to pin it down."

Liara took a moment to examine the unexplored world. Certainly beautiful, in her opinion. Bright yellow clouds swirled in a near unbroken blanket across its surface. It almost looked as though the planet had been wounded, however, with angry orange spots dotting the far left portion of the world.

"The signal seems to be using some kind of network to boost its range, as well as making it damn near impossible to tell where it's originating from." The pilot informed, "Won't be able to tell much more until we get closer."

"Thank you, flight officer. For now, we'll focus on the ships in front of us. Go ahead and open a channel." He ordered.

The pilot did as requested, entering the necessary commands to bring up communications with the alien ships, all eyes now on Captain Vakarian, waiting for him to utter the first words ever spoken by a Council race to this new species

"This is Captain Garrus Vakarian of the T.H.S. _Digeris_. I and my crew would like to formally greet you in the name of the Council. May there be peace and goodwill between our cultures." Garrus said, his breath baited, eager to hear the response.

His greeting was met with silence.

"The onboard translation programs are likely doing all they can, but there's no way they can translate what we say if they don't speak any language we know." Liara reasoned.

The captain's mandibles twitched, "There has got to be some way to get across to them that we're here with friendly intentions. Can you pull up an enhanced visual of those ships?" he asked the pilot.

"Yes, sir." The Asari acquiesced, an image popping up on the monitor to her left showing three small, oblong ships arraigned in an upside-down triangle formation, with the two upper ships hanging back a bit from the lower one. The design was certainly foreign to the crew of the _Digeris_ , the bow of the ships being thick, almost bulbous looking, before tapering off to what looked like a spiked tail toward the stern.

"They seem to resemble some kind of armored sea creature." Liara commented.

"Yes, well, if we could get the sea creatures to respond with something, that would be ideal." Garrus replied.

An indicator light flared to life on the center console.

"They sent out a message." The pilot said, surprised.

"Did we received it?" Garrus and Liara asked almost simultaneously.

"No." the pilot frowned in puzzlement. "It shot past us."

"Maybe they missed." Wrex quipped.

The corners of Liara's mouth turned upwards in a grin, but her expression turned worried when she noticed multiple dots appearing on the monitor in front of the pilot.

"I've got four ships coming from our left, around the curve of the planet, Captain." She reported. "Five headed in from our right, four more from the left…" she paused, then turned to face Garrus, her features schooled to look disciplined, but her eyes revealing her concern. "There are a lot of ships incoming."

"Maybe they're territorial, and we're trespassing?" Liara offered weakly.

Garrus growled, frustration born of simply not knowing what action to take beginning to grow in his mind. "Take us back a bit, try and make it clear we don't want to fight them." He ordered the pilot.

The _Digeris_ lurched backwards, sending it further away from the planet and the growing number of vessels.

"They're matching our speed and heading." The pilot reported, her fear mounting.

"Too bad, looks like they want a fight." Wrex supplied, wishing he could face these beings on the ground, instead of ship to ship. "Also, we probably shouldn't be sitting where we are right now."

"What do you mean?" Liara asked.

"That little message they sent out a minute ago? I'd bet this whole damn ship it was-"

"Captain, I'm getting something on long range scanners." A Turian officer called out from one of the consoles surrounding the command deck a few meters back from the cockpit.

"Something, Lieutenant?" Garrus questioned, ire evident in his voice. "I need you to be more specific."

Properly chastised, the officer clarified with, "It's a ship, moving at mass relay speeds. Its trajectory is going to put it behind us, and…" Turian faces couldn't change color like most other races, but his mandibles tightening in around his mouth gave a fairly good indication of what he was feeling at the moment. "It's enormous. Easily four times our size."

[][][][][][][]

On the far side of all the trouble rapidly brewing above Venus, three ships were en route to the jungle world at a crawl, their normally garish colors now a matte black. This was not normally how Guardians attempted to bypass Fallen ships, but with the amount of times others had tried and failed to slip past the expanding number of patrols scouring over Venus, this became Plan B: Approach as stealthily as possible, burn space when eventually spotted, land as hard and fast as was survivable, crush anything dumb enough to get in the way, find the missing Guardian, and get the _hell_ out. Commander Zavala and Cayde-6 were sold on it fairly easily. Ikora Rey was not quite as upbeat about it.

David Anderson knew it wasn't the best plan, it really wasn't even a good one, but he also knew that if they waited too much longer, that Hunter down there was not going to make it. He was not going to accept failure. Not today.

They couldn't use comms or talk via their Ghosts for fear of being detected by the Fallen ships, so they had their ship close enough together that they could write words on electronic touchpads and press them up against the glass of their cockpits, allowing them to remain in contact with each other, so long as they remembered to look left or right every so often. Anderson's ship being in the middle, he would be the one to pass along anything said from one member of his fireteam to the other.

A quiet voice with a mechanical whir to it spoke inside his helmet.

"It looks like they're moving off." It said.

Anderson squinted out of his ship's viewscreen. His Ghost was right, the Fallen dropships were making their way around to the other side of Venus. Why, he couldn't say, but it didn't matter much to him. They had a better chance now than they were likely to ever get.

He quickly scribbled out the words _full power on my mark_ onto his touchpad before holding it up to the left then the right side of his cockpit, making sure that both Guardians acknowledged it before putting it down.

Anderson took in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. Just a little bit more, just a little bit more…

One of the closer Fallen ships began to turn back to the direction they were coming from.

"Hit it." he barked into his now open comm, bringing _Light in the Abyss_ up to full speed.

The three ships roared to life, rushing forward and tearing through vacuum. Some of the Fallen ships tried to come about to intercept them, but by that time, the Guardians were already close to hitting the upper atmosphere of the planet.

"That SOS is jumping around in the Vex network like a Fallen Captain teleporting while on a caffeine high, but I'm pretty sure it's coming from somewhere in the Ishtar Sink." The EXO member of his fireteam, Nyx-27 informed him. "Surprised the Vex haven't tried to quash it, but since it's so basic, they probably think it's just a minor glitch or something."

"Can we get any more specific than the Ishtar Sink?" Anderson asked.

"No, sorry. Unless she starts transmitting outside the Vex network, we'll just have to go on what we know about her mission to try and find her." Nyx-27 replied. "If she did that, we could find her easy, but then the Fallen would be clued in too."

Anderson sighed. "All right, we go in heavy, kill anything in the way, but don't go out of your way to kill anything. Sweep the Ishtar Sink on Sparrows, look for any possible indicator of the Guardian's presence."

 _Come on Hunter, don't give up yet._ He pleaded silently, _We're coming to bring you home._

[][][][][][][]

Kasumi was running on empty.

She couldn't even recall how long she had been at this. A week, at the very least. One week straight of non-stop sprinting all over the Vex ruins, pausing only when she found a terminal where her ghost could keep the signal bouncing and boosted. Even with how much effort she put into slipping by the Vex patrols, she couldn't remain invisible forever, and they would manage to locate her at times, forcing her to use up what precious little ammo remained to deal with the damn robots. At least the Fallen had unknowingly done their part in giving her some much needed breathing room, the four-armed idiots frantically attacking the Vex stronghold from multiple angles, almost desperate to get a second shot at the cornered Guardian.

It still burned her to recall it, her beautiful ship just seconds away from picking the Hunter up after another successful mission before those Fallen pricks dropped out of nowhere, at least a half dozen patrol ships that simultaneously blasted Vacuum Diagram's shields and broke the ship into several pieces faster than her ghost could initiate any maneuvers. She had tried to stay and fight back, shouting threats and obscenities at her attackers all the while, heedless of any consequences as she threw herself at the fools who dared oppose her. Death was only an inconvenience, the first time being a grenade that exploded just a bit too close to her after she had lost her protective shielding. The second time she fell during that fight was due to an Oryx-cursed Vandal who had snuck up behind her using 'tactics' she often enjoyed using herself, what amounted to simply employing invisibility to slip behind Kasumi and running her through with an electrified blade.

That had been rather unpleasant. She had made sure to make him suffer for that when she got back up.

Fortunately for her, there was no third death, otherwise it would have been her last. She had been squaring off with one of the Fallen captains, who she identified as one of the last few remaining members of the Wolves, when that familiar steam began to rise off of her body and around her vision.

The Darkness would be her end if she died now.

So she ran, utilizing her handy little stealth technique to slip away. Still conscious of her almost completed mission as she dashed through the verdant and humid jungle, she needed to find some means of transportation to carry her off of Venus, regardless of what those means ended up being. Hijacking a Fallen ship was out of the question, as all of their ships possessed an unforgiving dead man's switch that could be activated remotely, causing the ship to detonate if any of the captains suspected that it was being taken by a hostile force.

For being the race known for taking everything they could get their grubby little hands on, they sure did like to take measures to ensure that their enemies got nothing.

Snagging a Vex ship was not an option, since they didn't appear to have anything resembling a navy, as far as the Guardians had been able to deduce. But now that her mind was on those ancient machines, her eye now roving over the Vex ruins that dominated the landscape and reached nearly to the lower atmosphere of the planet, she was beginning to formulate a plan...

"Bet you wished you'd have packed your sparrow now, huh?" The voice of her Ghost came through her helmet, bearing his usual amount of mockery.

"I told you, freeing up your available space makes you more effective at helping me keep my invisibility going." She shot back as she continued in her travel toward the Vex tower, the air so thick it felt as though she had to wade through it.

"Yeah? Tell me, does a few extra minutes of being undetectable really trump having a flying motorcycle to carry you around?"

"It's no less than fifty extra minutes of invisibility, and with what I have in mind, I'll be needing it."

Her Ghost went silent for only a moment before adding, "Bet you wished you had kept those extra ammo packs."

"Please shut up."

Thus did Kasumi find herself on her usual rounds, splicing into the Vex network, stealthing past groups of armored Minotaurs, fighting through the odd patrol, climbing, dodging, surviving.

Y'know, typical Guardian stuff.

As light an attitude as she wanted to keep regarding her current situation, even one as optimistic as herself began to grow anxious. Surely, her friends would be here any minute now, right? Granted, she could see from the bits of information her Ghost was getting from the Vex that the Fallen were practically infesting both the atmosphere and the area surrounding the Vex tower, so eager were they to make even one Guardian pay after what they had done to their precious Archons, and the defeat they handed to the House of Wolves.

Seriously, they needed to relax, see a psychiatrist about their anger management, _something_.

Her train of thought derailed when she noticed that her path had suddenly shifted. The trouble with Vex architecture was that there was no architecture. One second you had a clear path forward, and the next, the floor had become the walls, with Speaker knows what below you at that point. The Hunter had found herself on the outside of the tower, an area that, for the most part, had helped her avoid most of the Vex passively looking for that tiny, insignificant signal that her Ghost had so masterfully woven into their network.

Kasumi made the necessary adjustments to her footing to continue forward which, in this case, involved leaping from stone column to narrow stone column as they occasionally phased out of their reality and into a different one.

Yeah, fuck the Vex and their 'architecture'.

Finally clearing the impromptu obstacle course, Kasumi landed lightly on an outcropping of the massive, self-modifying structure which afforded an admittedly gorgeous view of the Ishtar Sink, the heavy foliage of the jungle sprawling all the way to the horizon, barring some patches of clearings here or there. To the left, the tropical wilderness was cut short by the monstrously wide canyon that cut like a wound through the landscape.

Definitely not a time to be sightseeing, she could hear the now familiar electronic _woosh_ signifying that a Vex patrol was teleporting in just ahead of her, the rapidly forming artificial storm clouds before her heralding not lightning, but mechanical foes. She had long since run out of ammunition for Fair and Square, a fact her Ghost made sure to bring up so he could nag her endlessly about it, which left the pair of heavy caliber rounds remaining in Her Fury. She wasn't even sure what she was saving them for, if anything, but she was definitely not going to use them here, a faint _zap_ sounding off as the stealthy Hunter shrouded herself from the harsh, blood-red gaze of the Vex.

The bronze tinted goblins almost looked confused, their movements approaching erratic as they walked this way and that, trying to locate a target that was no longer there.

Even primordial, planet altering robots could be given the slip.

She passed through their ranks quickly, making sure to avoid any physical contact with the Vex, lest they discover her presence. There were a couple of near-misses, a Hobgoblin just nearly bumping into her as it scanned for the elusive Hunter, but she otherwise made it through completely undetected, as always.

It was in the process of congratulating herself for slipping by Vex patrol number ninety six or so that the shroud concealing her from view flickered, just a little, but it was enough for the Vex to notice. The ones who were already facing in her direction opened fire without hesitation, insomuch that Kasumi wondered if they even knew what they were shooting at, as the rest followed suit. With next to no ammo remaining, she resorted to channeling what Light she could manage into her hand, a bright, pale blue orb forming rapidly which she tossed in the general direction of her attackers, the Guardian not intending to stick around to see how many hostiles were removed from existence courtesy of that grenade. Dark spots were beginning to dance through her vision from the exertion of forming the adhesive explosive in conjunction with her previous attempt at stealth.

This had become an increasingly annoying problem, abilities that used to be so simple, practically instinctive to use had transformed into a game of resource management, with her stamina being the key factor. She could still utilize her powers as a Hunter, but she had to choose where, when, and for how long she used them, lest exhaustion overpower her.

Guardians could do a lot, and kill even more, but more than seven continuous days of doing and killing really could take its toll on you.

"Keiji, I know it's getting difficult, but I _really_ need to stay invisible this time." Kasumi pleaded with her Ghost.

Keiji's response came mixed with harsh static. "I-I...I'm doi-...what I...can."

The reply tore at her, but she had to ask more of him, relying on what little Light he had left to give to make it just a bit longer.

Kasumi cursed as a lance of red light smacked into the small of her back, letting her know that at least one Hobgoblin was still active and in pursuit, heavier packets of crimson energy following after that initial shot. The now temporarily shieldless Guardian had to zigzag as she ran, mindful of the fact that there would be no dramatic 'rise from your grave' moment if she fell here. Her swearing become more colorful when more miniature storm clouds began forming right on top of her, and, while she certainly didn't stick around to gawk, the silhouettes she noticed materializing from the corner of her eye clued her in that the next wave of bad guys included those damn Minotaurs she had heretofore become so good at avoiding.

The already grim situation managed to get even worse when the wide walkway she had been taking around the outside edge of the Vex structure suddenly phased out of being, the path now continuing at least forty meters away after an almost vertigo-inducing drop to the jungle below, leaving Kasumi stranded with all of the homicidal robots on the other side.

"Y-y-y...-ou...can...ma-ake...th-th-...jum-…"

"I couldn't make that even if I wasn't beyond exhausted!" Kasumi exclaimed incredulously.

"Use...blink...tru-tru-…-st...me."

The Hunter hesitated only a second before quickly backing up.

She would need a running start for this.

Kasumi dug deep into her remaining reserves of energy as her boots pounded on the ancient stones toward the edge of the path, trusting Keiji to give her the extra boost she needed. Laser fire burning the air around her, explosives colliding with the surface she had occupied only seconds ago, she took the gamble, and made the leap.

She reached the arc of her jump much too quickly for her liking, before using her short-ranged teleportation to try and get her the rest of the way. Although the transition time in between a blink was only a fraction of a second, she thought she could hear a sound like glass shattering, a pure yet jarring noise. Miraculously, Kasumi came out of the blink on the other side of the platform with room to spare.

But she knew before her boots hit the ground that Keiji was gone.

Angry, in pain, and just so unbelievably _tired_ , Kasumi watched with almost passive annoyance when a Fallen patrol ship rose up above the walkway she was stood upon. She had only now recalled the reason why she tended to stay _inside_ the Vex Tower.

 _Doesn't matter now_ she thought dejectedly.

Raising her beloved sniper rifle's stock up to rest on her shoulder, the Hunter let out a furious battle cry as she fired off her last remaining bullets, intending to thread the needle into that tiny slit that served as a 'window' for the scavenger vessel.

But her angered shout probably came out as more of a hoarse cough, Fallen ships had no windows, on the front or anywhere else, and as she stood there, directly in the path of the heavy turret's bright blue lances, she remembered that her shields still hadn't fully recharged.

The stone beneath her, unforgiving as it was, absorbed at least some of the impact as the packets of unstable energy struck it, blasting Kasumi off of her feet to impact hard against the outer wall behind her. Bereft of ammunition, dazed, injured, and still so inescapably weary, she thought it best to just lie there, maybe take a nap.

The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes, before the Fallen came and brought their petty little vengeance with them, was a trio of comets, hurtling down toward the planet.

[][][][][][][]

It was Nyx who had made the call, and, in hindsight, it was a damn good one. Despite making the correct guess that Kasumi was somewhere within the Vex Spire amplifying that signal, that was still a lot of ground to cover.

Thanks be to the Fallen, who did their work for them.

No patrol ship would be dumb enough to get that close to the Spire unless they found something worth taking the risk. Before his fireteam could even get close to the Vex structure, they could see blue, purple and red lights flashing back and forth as both sides fought for whatever it was they were clashing over, which Anderson took the liberty of assuming that it was their missing Guardian.

"Bunker, bring us thirty meters above that Fallen craft, then put me outside the ship, please."

The little geometric shapes surrounding his Ghost's 'eye' whirred and twirled excitedly. "You're going to do another 'bomb drop'?"

A grim smile crept over the Titan's face. "Yeah, we're doin' a bomb drop."

Anderson's Ghost was referring to something that originated from an off-hand comment delivered by Lord Shaxx to what passed for an air force during the Battle of the Twilight Gap.

 _"if you run out of bombs, don't worry, you can just strap Titans to the bottoms of your aircraft, and drop them, they'll have the same effect."_

Thus, it was a favorite thing amongst Arc-wielding Titans to make an explosive entrance into any battle, whether the fight had actually started or not.

Unfortunately for the combatants below, their fight had indeed already begun, such that they failed to notice the Guardian ships that swiftly deposited their singular occupants, Anderson and the destructive shockwave that accompanied his landing nailing the Fallen ship, bringing it to 'critical' damage levels in a single strike, Nyx-27 floating almost lazily through the air while unleashing a trio of burning projectiles fashioned from inscrutable void energy whilst shouting, "Eat Nova Bombs, bitches!" And finally Vaika, who hit the ground after having unloaded her gun formed from sunfire, the blistering rounds scorching through Fallen Captains and Vex Minotaurs, the Awoken running straight for Kasumi.

By the time Anderson made it to the impromptu battlefield, it was already over, both sides laying in absolute ruin from the wrath of the Guardians.

"Well, how bad is it?" Anderson questioned Vaika as Nyx landed lightly next to him.

Their resident Hunter looked unusually serious, which was never a good sign. "It's bad, but she should last long enough to get her out of this Dark Zone."

Anderson nodded briskly. "Let's not waste time, then." Without delay, the Titan picked up Kasumi's unconscious form and threw her over his shoulder as if she had no weight to her. "Move out, Guardians."

"We'll have to split up when we reach orbit. Nyx and I will try and draw the patrol ships away while you make a break for earth." Vaika said, as they called down their respective ships.

"Not necessary, Guardian." Bunker informed them.

"You have a better idea?" Anderson challenged.

"No, but I do have scans from Light in the Abyss that show all the Fallen ships have moved off."

Nyx's mechanical eyes shut off then turned back on quickly, in her practiced imitation of a human blink. "Moved off? Moved off where?" she asked.

"They've all grouped together on the far side of Venus, their comms are lighting up with manic chatter, and…" he paused, then the top and bottom portions of the geometric shapes lining his 'eye' split further apart, mimicking a wide-eyed expression. "Fallen comms confirm that we've got a Ketch in orbit, but I don't think it's after us." He finished.

"'Don't think'? Can you make that more concrete?" Anderson asked, convinced that it was time to haul ass _now_.

"They seem to be chasing something. I can't tell what it is, but the Fallen are using words that translate to things like 'jewel' and 'prize'. Whatever it is, they're throwing everything they have at it."

"We can figure that out later." Anderson concluded firmly, as his body was split into tiny pieces before being recombined back inside his ship, the wayward Hunter still in his arms. "Our only immediate priority is getting Kasumi some medical attention." He gingerly laid her out onto a cot in what passed for a med bay on a Guardian ship. It wasn't the best, but his Ghost would be able to keep her stable while he got them home.

He was greeted with a burst from his comm before he even got strapped into his pilot seat.

"You seeing this, Anderson?" Nyx-27 asked incredulously.

Anderson's eyes went wide when he pulled up the footage Nyx's ship was scanning in real time. Just around the bend of the planet's upper atmosphere, a sizable fleet of Fallen ships were giving chase to…something. It was certainly a ship, but he had never seen anything like it. The elegant vessel darted through space like an arrow as it narrowly avoided being hit by both flak cannon fire and energy blasts.

His face set into a hard scowl as he keyed in commands to open a secure channel back to the Tower. He was not certain what kind of trouble was happening over there, but if their luck remained as bad as it had been lately, he was convinced that same trouble was probably headed in their direction.

 **You know what's hard? Trying to figure out how two ships from two different sci-fi universes measure up to one another when neither universe takes the time to explain exactly how long either craft is. And if the whole scanning/communication distance seems super arbitrary/unclear? Probably because I'm just making it up as I go along. That'll happen.**

 **Anyways…Hi. I had every intention of dropping a little note at the end of the first chapter(and by extension, this chapter as well, when I first updated it), but both times, it was fairly late and, at that point, I just wanted to get the chapter up and be done with it. So yeah, in case the boring dialogue and questionable plot devices didn't make it clear enough, this is my first attempt at putting a story up here. Not necessarily my first attempt at writing, but we're not going to go there. It's a scary place.**

 **Anyways, I can't give any accurate estimate on when the next chapter is coming, but barring a horrific catastrophe, I should have the next several days free, so that'll hopefully speed things along.**

 **Till next time.**

 **EDIT: So, a lot of you made mention of certain problems that existed with this particular chapter and, as promised, I have (hopefully) rectified them. I DID leave the Awoken pilot conversation about spaceships and windows only because it's effectively canon via The Taken King that the Awoken have windows on their ships.**

 **If I have failed in any way to fix the issues here, I'm sure someone will let me know about it. Thanks again to everyone who has been so kind in favoriting following, and reviewing.**

 **Till next time.**


	3. Ketch This

Four figures sat or stood on a balcony set within a large, circular room, the rear wall of which was cut out to reveal a breathtaking view of the Traveler, the immense, bleached white sphere hanging benignly over the Last City that law sprawled for many square miles over the arid landscape. Positioned at the center of the room, a small glowing orb defied gravity as a number of large metal frames, both rings and rectangles, spun a dizzying dance around the orb, never coming into contact with the sphere or each other. The aforementioned balcony sat to the left of the entrance into the observatory, a mixture of random electronic equipment, unusual and archaic contraptions, and book-filled shelves that reached nearly to the rounded ceiling surrounding the gallery. One of the people present, a woman with flawless dark skin, dressed in a flowing, almost regal robe colored in purple and grey, opened her mouth to speak.

"I understand where you're coming from, Zavala, I really do." She said, "I and everyone else in the City would love to see more results, but with the progress we've been able to make in the last few months, it would be a disaster to repeat the mistakes of the past now."

The man being addressed, an imposing, light blue-skinned Awoken with piercing eyes the color of lightning, his body from the neck down outfitted with bulky protective armor, nodded his head.

"I completely agree." His rich baritone voice affirmed, "But you must also understand, the disaster you're referring to was a result of the actions of one very powerful enemy. An enemy who is now dead, thanks to the strike force Anderson led into the Hive Pit." The bald Awoken paused a moment, before continuing, "You are right. Wasting the lives of Guardians now, after our recent victories against such powerful enemies, would be unacceptable. But unless we start pushing beyond the Walls of our city, the Fallen, the Hive, all our enemies in this system will simply continue to keep us at the edge of extinction. That _cannot_ be permitted any longer."

The woman, Ikora Rey, pursed her lips and shook her head. "It has indeed been very difficult for a long time." She conceded, "But we have always managed to survive, and I believe we will continue to do so. Even if we planned and tried to foresee every possible angle, a botched offensive could end the lives of more Guardians than we could ever hope to gain again."

Zavala set his jaw in a hard line. "I'm well aware of that." He responded, his words clipped, "But the triumphs that have enkindled a light of hope in the people of the City were won in the face of unbelievable odds. Atheon, Crota, The House of Wolves, the amount of Guardians we could have lost going up against such foes is staggering, yet we emerged victorious, with almost no losses on our side." Zavala folded his arms over his armored chest and looked down, before bringing his eyes back to Ikora's and concluding, softly, "In our state, it is impossible to make any progress without taking many risks. That is how it has always been, and will likely continue to be."

Ikora sighed and placed her hands on her hips. How could she explain to the Titan that, for the most part, he was right? Hell, she was with him on this. She wanted nothing more than to be out there, punishing the enemies of the Light, trying to restore humanity to the lofty heights it had once reached. But could they ever come to that point again? Even with how much the Guardian's numbers had been swelling as of late, they were still laughably outnumbered in the face of all those who wanted to see them erased from existence. Persevering despite such woes was something they had all grown accustomed to. But going on the offensive? Taking back so much of what they had lost? As badly as she and likely every other Guardian wanted that, she was convinced it just wasn't feasible at the moment.

She turned her head to the right when a voice that had thus far remained silent suddenly spoke up. "What do you think of all this, Cayde? We have yet to hear your input on this matter." The Speaker asked, his face hidden behind that mysterious mask.

The hooded EXO Hunter didn't respond at first, his hands planted on the railing of the balcony, facing the vista that the Traveler filled. Eyes still fixed on their old ally, he said, finally, "Eh, who can say? I want it just as badly as Zavala does, but an all-out attack on the Hive? That sounds a bit too risky for my gears. At the same time, sitting around on our hands all day isn't gonna get us anywhere, so," He brought himself around to face the present company, the long metal horn jutting at an upward angle from his forehead swinging around to point in their general direction. "How 'bout a compromise?" he asked his fellow Vanguards.

Ikora's response was a raised eyebrow. Zavala's was a simple "Let's hear it."

Cayde-6 rubbed his gloved hands together. "Alright, so the Warlock wants us to play it careful, the Titan wants us to charge in headfirst." Cayde-6 spread his arms out after that statement. "Some things never change." He finished wryly. "But" he began again, raising a finger up. "I think we can find a middle ground here. We've got a boatload of new Guardians around now, some of them have never even seen live combat outside the Crucible. They're not ready to take part in a major engagement, but we can fix that. Have the rookies run the patrols outside the City, let 'em get dirty fighting the Fallen out there, get some hands on experience. At the same time, we send some of our veteran fireteams to the Moon, quietly. Have them gather any and all intel they can about the Hive, their numbers, their fortified positions, any spots we can effectively defend or hole up in, all that jazz. The newer kids learn the finer arts of how to beat someone's face in, the more experienced people get the tougher assignments they're always begging for, and get us useful information at the same time." Cayde took in a breath, despite the fact that he didn't actually require oxygen, given his mechanical nature, before finishing with, "Thoughts?"

The ending of Cayde's speech was met with silence, the Speaker nodding his approval, while the other two Vanguards chewed on the EXO's words in their minds.

"I can accept that." Zavala stated at last.

Ikora hesitated, then dipped her head toward Cayde-6 in a slight bow. "This will work for me as well."

"I'm pleased we could come to a consensus." The speaker said, as he rose from his chair. "Ikora, you will oversee the arrangement of novice Guardians into fireteams to be sent into the wilds beyond the City. Let them learn to defeat those who would snuff out our Light. Zavala, I'm sure you know of many Guardians who desire a greater challenge, now that some of our more prominent adversaries have been vanquished. Have them uncover all they can concerning the Hive inhabiting the Moon." The Titan and Warlock nodded their understanding, and started toward the exit. Their Hunter companion was about to join them when the Speaker caught his attention. "You handled that quite nicely, Cayde." He complimented

. "Ah, you just gotta remember that the two of them are like two opposite edges of a sword." Cayde explained, "Each of 'em wants the sword to swing the direction they want it to, you just gotta show them that the best solution is to just stab down the middle, use both edges of the blade at the same time."

"An apt description." The Speaker said, "Where does that leave the Hunter, I wonder?"

Cayde's face was not capable of forming a smile, but somehow, he got pretty close. "The Hunter's the one who brought a gun to a sword fight."

The Speaker thought of something else as the Vanguards were making their way down the stairs toward the exit, and called out to the Titan. "And Zavala, tell the fireteams headed for the Moon that if they wish to search the Pit, it is permitted, but please be certain that their own survival remains high on their list of priorities."

Zavala nodded his understanding, but before he could continue his march back to the Hall of Guardians, his Ghost materialized next to him.

"I'm picking up an encrypted transmission, patching it through." His Ghost stated, before the shapes lining his 'eye' split apart and expanded outward, creating a large blue sphere connecting the now fragmented geometric pieces.

"This is Shining Maw lead to Tower Actual, do you copy?" a resonant male voice asked over the comm channel.

Ikora and Cayde-6 subconsciously leaned in toward the Ghost. Shining Maw was the name of Anderson's fireteam.

"We read you, Shining Maw, what's your status?" Zavala asked, unable to hide some of the eagerness in his voice.

"We got that Hunter out of there, and we're on our way home. My Ghost is doing what he can, but she'll need some proper medical attention as soon as I get her to you." There was some hesitation on the other end of the line before Anderson added, "And we may have a problem."

"We're listening Guardian, tell us what's happening." Ikora blurted before Zavala could respond. The Awoken shot her an annoyed look, but she paid it no mind.

"We're looking at nearly fifty Fallen patrol ships and a damn Ketch chasing after a vessel that doesn't match any known designs. No idea where it came from, but the Fallen want it _bad_. Shining Maw three had an open channel with the mystery ship for a minute. She reported that neither party could understand each other, but she had the brilliant idea of giving them coordinates that would send them your way." Anderson said, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice.

The Guardian in question hopped into the channel via her Ghost. " _They_ tried to hail _me_! What was I supposed to do? Hang up on them?" Vaika asked in exasperation.

"Anything that didn't involve leading the largest Fallen fleet since the Twilight Gap on a collision course with Earth!" Anderson responded hotly.

Shining Maw three had no answer to that.

"I humbly suggest you get every ship available into orbit ASAP." Anderson continued, "If we can present a large enough force, we might be able to get the Fallen to back down. If the Fallen take a risk and try to fight, we should only have to keep them tied up long enough for that ship to escape."

"Acknowledged, what's your ETA?" Zavala questioned.

"We'll be arriving in the next five minutes or so, but the unknowns are on engine power, so my Ghost ran some estimates, and he figures that they'll make it to Earth in about 15 minutes, give or take."

"The unknowns don't have FTL?" Cayde-6 asked, incredulously. Zavala made another annoyed face, which was again ignored. This is why he tried to take calls when he was alone.

Despite knowing the Vanguards on the other end of the channel couldn't see, Anderson raised his hands in confusion. "Hell if I know. Maybe they don't, or maybe they do but it's damaged, we've got nothing to go on he-Kasumi? What the _hell_ are you doing!? Get back to the-." Anderson's words were cut off as new voice faintly rasped,

"Is this channel encrypted? I have information about my mission that needs to-" Kasumi started.

"What you _need_ is to haul your ass back to the med-bay so that Ghost can keep you alive!" Anderson's voice became more muffled, as if he had turned away from the mic. "Ghost, make sure she gets back there, and strap her down, if you have to."

"With what?" his ghost's voice could just barely be heard, asking tersely.

"Trans-mat something from around the ship, I don't care, just make sure she doesn't try to escape you stabilizing her again!"

A sigh could be heard over the channel as Anderson tried to bring his thoughts back to the subject at hand. "Right, so the unidentified ship either can't FTL, or doesn't have it. Not sure how they're gonna make it to Earth through 15 minutes of heavy fire, but I did catch sight of them pulling some fancy moves to avoid getting cooked before we made the jump. Plus, it's the Fallen. They're only gonna try and damage the ship enough for them to be able to board it and strip it clean."

"Acknowledged, we'll make sure to get every Guardian currently stationed here airborne and burning space in that direction." Zavala said.

"Much appreciated. Sending you information on the trajectory of that ship now. Shining Maw lead, out," The comm channel shut down as The Titan's Ghost reverted back to its usual form.

A blaring klaxon could be heard echoing throughout the Tower. "The alarm has been sounded." The Ghost enlightened them, a bit unnecessarily.

Zavala turned to the EXO in the present company. "Cayde, get to the hanger, coordinate with Holliday to get every Guardian ship not down for repairs active and in formation moving toward that trajectory. I'll get on the loudspeaker and make sure that everyone is made aware of what's happening. Ikora, make sure a medical team is standing by the moment Anderson and his team hit the ground." Both Vanguards quickly nodded before dashing off to perform their respective tasks. As Cayde sprinted across the central courtyard of the Tower, he could hear Zavala's voice reverberating over the loudspeaker, even with the klaxon still wailing.

 _"Attention, all Guardians. We have confirmed that a Ketch and support craft are headed this direction, in pursuit of a ship of unknown design and origin. Any Guardians with ships ready to fly need to be headed for orbit and in formation immediately. ETA for the hostile fleet is set at approximately 15 minutes, so get moving, Guardians."_

 _Well, at least today is definitely not gonna be boring._ Cayde thought, as he picked up the pace toward Holliday and the hanger.

[][][][][][][]

Liara was nearing a panic attack.

When that behemoth of a ship roared in behind them, Garrus had all but shouted at the pilot to 'Get us the _hell_ out now'. Not requiring any more encouragement, the flight officer slammed the _Digeris_ to its maximum engine speed, flying at a right angle to both the dreadnought behind them and the small fleet of lighter craft in front of them. Thus began a long, harrowing chase that Liara still wasn't convinced they would be able to survive. She was strapped in to one of the seats placed behind the pilot, with Wrex seated to her left. Garrus was in the co-pilots seat, reading tactical data, trying to find some way to increase their chances of not getting reduced to space debris.

"Are our kinetic barriers even up?" Garrus asked, making an impressive effort to conceal the worry Liara suspected he was feeling. Or maybe his fear was evident in the trills of his speech. She couldn't tell.

The Asari's stomach lurched when the pilot forced the ship into a dizzying spin, searing, bright blue lances of energy sizzling past the cockpit into empty space, just barely missing. Liara thanked the Goddess the mass effect generator was still functioning, keeping the gravity of the _Digeris_ separate from the movement of the ship itself, otherwise she would have emptied the contents of her stomach long ago. As it was, just the stars dancing around the viewport as the pilot performed more and more barrel rolls and the sheer volume of laser bolts lancing past them was more than enough to make her queasy.

"Our kinetic barriers can't deflect extreme heat, and that's the only thing these patrol ships are firing at us. The only thing between us and those energy weapons is the ablative armor plating, and that can only take so many hits" The pilot answered through gritted teeth, "That dreadnought is the only one of them that's got projectiles, but it's so lumbering and slow, it's starting to lag behind. Now if these smaller bastards could just _screw off!"_ she finished with a yell, sending the _Digeris_ into a corkscrew dive before yanking it back up. The maneuver was pulled fast enough to catch one of their pursuers off guard, the oblong craft shooting past the _Digeris'_ underside into the view of their cannons. The pilot didn't hesitate, lining up a quick shot before sending a mass accelerated round hurtling toward the enemy ship. The light armor on its rear was not sufficient to protect it, the shot connecting just above the ship's tail-like protrusion, ripping straight through to the vessel's cockpit, sending a blossom of fire out as the ship split apart.

"Yeah, right up your ass, bitch!" the pilot exuberantly yelled, before glancing at the Turian seated next to her, and adding, in a slightly more subdued tone, "Uh, sorry, sir."

Garrus kept his attention on the displays in from of him. "Relax, I don't have a problem with outbursts in this situation, flight officer." He said, "Now, if you can just pull that same trick about 20 more times or so, we should be in the clear."

The pilot let out a single breath of laughter. "I'll do my best, sir." She responded, trying to make sure they stayed more or less on course toward the mystery planet whilst keeping the ship from accruing too much damage.

It was still surreal for Liara to think about, seeing that trio of heavy fighters speeding away from the brightly colored world. Garrus made the snap decision to try and hail one of them and, amazingly, they answered the hail, a soft accent flavoring the words of the feminine-sounding voice. They couldn't understand a single thing the voice said, but at least someone had given them the courtesy of responding instead of forming a massive conga line of death behind them. The attempt at communication didn't last long before the being on the other end gave up and simply sent them coordinates directing them to the third planet from the system's star. They had no idea what to expect, and trusting an unknown voice they couldn't understand wasn't ideal even under poor circumstances, but at this point, they really didn't have any other option.

"Can we try and get them close enough for the GARDIAN lasers to hit them?" Garrus questioned.

"Maybe," the pilot admitted, "But even if we could, we'd be hitting their fronts, which seems to be the most heavily armored portion of them. The lasers would likely overheat and become unusable before they did much damage. Unless…" she cast a side-long glance at Garrus. "Can you set that system to manual aiming?"

"Yes…" Garrus hedged, having an inkling of where she was going with this.

"I hear you're a pretty good shot."

"I'd like to think I'm fairly decent in that area." Garrus replied modestly.

"If I can get us close enough, think you can nail their laser cannons?" the pilot said, almost more of a challenge than a question.

"It isn't exactly like lining up a target in my scope's crosshairs, but I'll do my best." Garrus replied, talon-tipped fingers already executing the necessary commands to place the GARDIAN point defense lasers under his control. He had accepted the rank of captain gracefully, and he cared about the welfare of his crew, but _this_ is what he loved most, going for the impossible shot, being under pressure to make that shot was what he thrived on more than anything. "Ready when you are, flight officer." He confirmed, his focus trained on the console that showed the area of space behind them. _That's a lot of ships._ He thought warily.

"Okay…reversing thrust in 3…2…1…"

The _DIgeris_ appeared to hit the brakes mid-flight, nearly sending their pursuers on a collision course with their stern, before the patrol ships managed to dodge around the larger vessel. But not before thin beams of burning red light began streaming from small gun emplacements spread across the hull. The angry streaks of energy sliced across the dual turrets of the closest hostile, melting and fusing the metal, making it inoperable, before doing the same to a second. A third enemy escaped slightly less damaged, only losing one turret to uselessness before twisting around to present its armored top portion to the lasers.

"Not bad, captain." The pilot said with a grin. "A few more moves like that, and we might be able to turn this around."

"I doubt they'll fall for that trick twice." Garrus warned.

"Maybe not," the pilot conceded, "but now they're gonna have to make a choice: either pull far enough back so we can't reach them even if we reverse, which means more of their shots will likely miss, or risk it and stay close, allowing us to- _dammit!_ " the pilot shouted, as the ship was suddenly rocked with a powerful impact, red warning lights now flickering across the many consoles in the cockpit. The Ketch that had been lagging behind had managed to close the distance somewhat when the _Digeris_ stopped its forward motion, catching them off guard with a long range laser volley that nailed their starboard engines.

"Engine three is down!" Tali exclaimed fearfully over Garru's omnitool. "And engine four is losing power! We can't take another hit like that!"

"Tell me something I don't know!" the pilot growled before Garrus could respond, whipping the _Digeris_ into another series of spins to avoid more of the seemingly endless incoming fire.

"I'm focused on trying to use the GARDIAN lasers right now, Tali. Can you confirm that most of the damage we've sustained is centered around the engines only?"

"Yes, that seems to be the only place on the ship they're shooting at." Tali said without hesitation.

"Betcha they're scavengers." Wrex commented.

"Got a theory, Battlemaster? I'd love to hear it." Garrus replied, deft hands lining up another hostile ship that had strayed too close as he relieved it of its offensive capabilities.

"A fleet this size would have torn most ships apart by now." Wrex started, inclining his head toward the Asari seated in front of him. "No offense to our pilot. From what the Quarian told us, seems like these guys want to disable us, not destroy us. Then you got the design of those ships, all armor plating on the front. They probably charge in, knock out a target's engines, then board it and take or break down anything they can. No armor on their backsides means they only turn their back on a target after it's been scrapped for anything of value." Wrex finished, his demeanor eerily devoid of any concern, despite the chaos that was engulfing the interior and exterior of their vessel.

"Oh, so they just want to steal everything on this ship, then leave us stranded In the middle of unknown space?" Liara asked, her tone a mixture of anxiety and sarcasm. "For some reason, that isn't much more comforting than being vaporized."

Wrex had the nerve to chuckle at her biting remark, and simply replied with a confident "Let 'em try. I hope these assholes are the first of their kind to see what happens when you piss off a Krogan."

"While I don't doubt your skill in a fight, Wrex, we'll save the 'let them board us' option for the scenario where they actually manage to incapacitate us." Garrus said.

Wrex merely shrugged against the restraints of his chair. "Suit yourself."

The Flight Officer whistled as Garrus de-clawed another one of the enemy ships. "Propulsion problems aside, Captain, you keep that up, and we'll have a bunch of angry, stinger-less wasps around us. We're losing some speed, but I'm pretty sure I can keep far enough away from the big one to make it to the planet first."

Whatever Garrus might have replied with was cut off when one of the 'stinger-less wasps' suddenly filled up the entire view from the cockpit.

"Goddess!" the pilot shouted, too caught off guard to come up with a more colorful exclamation to use, as she banked hard to port to avoid colliding with the errant ship. Precious little time passed before she was forced up and to starboard as another one of the now weaponless craft cut diagonally across their path.

"Spirits, what are they trying to do?" Garrus asked, shaken by the sudden shift into an apparently self-destructive mindset on the part of their enemies.

"I think I get it, and I'll admit, it's damn clever." The pilot conceded, grudgingly. "They know our engines are half screwed, so they figure that if they can force us into a zig-zag pattern, the big ship might catch up to us. It's gonna be a bad day for us if that dreadnought can get into close range, but at least this way, I can get more shots off at these _bastards_." She punctuated her last word with a direct hit to one of the patrol craft attempting to play chicken with her, smashing the front end of the ship in, leaving it as little more than an unidentifiable scrap of metal. Her victory was short lived when she was again forced to put the _Digeris_ into a wide turn to keep from slamming into one of the near-suicidal ships, its trajectory being too steep to get off a clear shot. They would not be able to keep this up. The Ketch was closing the gap.

"Engines are holding at 40% power, Captain." Tali reported. "I could try to divert more power to them, but I'm afraid it wouldn't help much, given the damage they've already sustained."

"Sir, that dreadnought is gaining ground on us!" a Turian crewmember called out from his seat at one of the consoles further back in the ship.

"I'm sorry, Captain." The pilot said, uncharacteristically quiet, beads of sweat rolling down the lavender skin of her face. "But I'm all out of ideas here."

Garrus' scale-covered face remained as unreadable as ever as he beheld the readouts detailing the _Digeris'_ compromising position, as well as the numerous blips depicting the enemy fleet, now reduced in number, but still boasting more than sufficient firepower to overcome them.

"Thank you, Flight Officer. Bring us about, then power down engines." He ordered.

To her credit, the pilot did not hesitate to perform the command, though she was unable to stop the questioning "Uh, sir?" that slipped past her military discipline

"Outrunning them clearly isn't an option anymore." Garrus stated, as the view of the currently tiny, distant planet they had been trying to reach was slowly replaced by the oncoming fleet. "I'm sure the Turian Hierarchy would string me up for saying this, but we'll go with a modified version of the Krogan's plan."

Wrex blinked in surprise. "I had a plan?" he asked.

"Of a sort, yes." Garrus clarified, eyes trained on the approaching mass of ships. "They've stopped firing, they probably figure we're surrendering."

"But, we're not?" Liara asked hopefully.

Garrus let out a soft chuckle. "Not yet." He turned to the pilot, and said, "They're lining up for you out there, take out as many as you can."

"With pleasure, sir." The Flight Officer said, a dark grin painting her face. Two of the patrol ships were destroyed in the opening salvo, before the rest of them gathered their wits and began evasive maneuvers. In the chaos of all the smaller vessels scattering, two more were hit, one of them turning into a column of fire for a brief second, the other losing all propulsion capability, and was forced to drift aimlessly before a second shot put it out of its misery. One of the ships decided to become aggressive and attempted to disable the cannons firing almost nonstop at them, and was rewarded with a pair of flickering globes of energy, the javelin disruptor torpedoes generating an unstable mass effect field that shredded the unfortunate dropship. The remaining enemy ships, while still numerous, began distancing themselves from their now vengeful quarry. While the Asari pilot might have chalked it up to her ferocity on the cannons, the real reason for their enemies' hesitation became evident when the dreadnaught started growing larger as it loomed over them, its design oddly similar to that of some ancient, low-altitude airships, just many times bigger. The pilot alternated mass accelerator cannon volleys with torpedo launches, but their hopes of damaging the immense Ketch were dashed when a blue light began to burn where the attempted attacks were aimed, a powerful shield absorbing the offensive before it could cause harm.

"Shit." The pilot muttered angrily. "They're not even firing, they're so confident that we can't hurt them." She turned to Garrus and asked, "What are your orders, Captain?"

By this point, Wrex had already unstrapped himself from his seat, double checking the ammo on his shotgun when Garrus' voice rang out through the _Digeris_.

"All hands, prepare to repel boarders."

Liara's heart sunk as she wringed her trembling hands. She was an archaeologist, dammit. She might have taken that advanced combat and shooting course, and her biotics could normally scare off any dangerous wildlife she sometimes encountered during a dig, but this was going to be a desperate battle to keep a significantly larger force from taking and possibly incapacitating this state-of-the-art ship. Considering she had never been in an actual firefight before, she was definitely not ready for this.

Liara was much more hesitant than Wrex or Garrus as she slowly released the straps keeping her secured to her chair, trying to recall all of the information she had been given during that military-level weapons training class. She was just about to join Captain Vakarian and Wrex, who were already discussing possible strategies and directing groups of armed crewmembers to various points on the _Digeris_ , when a gasp from the pilot caused her to pivot back to face the cockpit, her gaze landing on the console depicting short range scans, which the Flight Officer was staring wide-eyed at. A blue triangle in the center represented them, with a large red dot situated nearly on top of them signifying the hulking shadow of the enemy dreadnought, surrounded by smaller dots. Her surprise came when she noticed the mass of several dozen yellow blips that were swiftly approaching their stern, three green spots mixed in among the others. Remembering herself, the pilot yelped "Captain!" and pointed a finger at the display.

Garrus rushed back to the cockpit, his eyes harsh as he beheld what the pilot was gesturing to. "More unknowns?" he asked grimly.

The pilot inspected text scrolling across the display detailing the readings being picked up from the new arrivals before answering. "Yes, but three of them match those heavy fighters we encountered earlier."

"They came back to help us." Liara breathed softly in awe.

The space around the _Digeris_ erupted in flashes of brilliant light, as the attack force of heavy fighters decelerated from FTL, already in an offensive formation as they immediately sent volleys of cluster missiles that zeroed in on the shields covering the Ketch's bow, not powerful enough to penetrate the protective barrier, but more than sufficient to convince the lumbering ship to abandon its plan of boarding the _Digeris_ and ponderously reverse course, its myriad of weapon emplacements spitting furiously at the uninvited guests. Liara quickly noticed that, while the patrol craft that had been chasing them were sturdy, well-rounded ships, they were most certainly not designed to engage in dogfights, especially with the likes of these unrelenting fighters, their surprise saviors performing a graceful dance of death that the hostiles simply could not keep up with. The Ketch was another problem, its sheer mass making it difficult to deal with, even with the currently unrivaled maneuverability of their mystery allies. Liara did not realize how long they had been standing there, watching in amazement when a soft electronic chime sounded through the cockpit.

"They sent us coordinates." The pilot reported. "Same as before, third planet from the star, northern hemisphere."

"I guess they're trying to tell us that we're not invited to this party." Garrus said, thankful that it did not have to come to a vicious brawl to keep their ship from the scavengers. "I'd love to stay and watch the show, but I suppose we could humor them and limp away before we take any more hits. Get us back on course for that planet, Flight Officer." He ordered.

[][][][][][][]

The world they were directed to was now much larger than before, the huge sphere taking up most of their forward view. Liara found this one to be rather plain, the greens and browns marking the landscape of the planet mixed in with the deep blue of the various oceans and white streaks of clouds concealing portions of the world were unassuming, in her opinion. While far from the most beautiful heavenly body she had seen, it was apparently the home planet or a planet occupied by the people who had taken an incredible risk to help them, so she wasn't going to complain. The Asari archaeologist was currently under the assumption that this was not their home world, given that scans showed mostly ruins covering the surface, with only one large city being occupied, likely a colony.

What was most certainly not ordinary about the world was the curious pale orb orbiting unusually close to it, similar to a moon, though much smaller, and its proximity suggested it was some kind of massive, artificial device. Where the sphere might have once been uniformly white, something had scarred the surface around the nadir of the supposedly synthetic celestial object, leaving part of it pitch black.

"Are we picking up anything regarding that…whatever it is?" Liara queried, unsure as to its purpose.

The pilot bit her lip as she scrutinized the information scrolling by on the holographic screen. "We are," she hedged, "But it pretty much amounts to very faint energy readings."

Garrus leaned in closer from his position from the co-pilot seat to inspect the readouts for himself. "It's positioned directly over that lone city, could it be some kind of defense oriented machine? Something that only activates when a threat is detected?"

"Possibly," the pilot admitted. "But we're not picking up any kind of weapon emplacements, and there's nothing to suggest that it could generate a shield, so we're either looking at a hilariously large ornament, or the galaxy's most oversized early warning system." She twisted back to look at Garrus with a grin. "We should take after these people, hang balls off of our planets, that'll look cool, right?"

Garrus let out a throaty laugh as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Let's try not insult these people before we've properly met them." He admonished lightly. "Speaking of which, have they sent us a greeting, or tried to contact us? I assume they can detect us by now."

The pilot merely shrugged. "Far as I can tell, the comm tower in that city is acknowledging us, but they're not attempting to make contact. I guess somebody clued them in on the fact that we can't understand each other."

Garrus hummed as he leaned back in his chair. "Well, they're not scrambling any kind of emergency response, so I'll assume we're more or less welcome." He turned to cast a weary glance at Liara and Wrex, and asked, "Ready to make history for real this time?"

Liara's laughter was mostly born of the release of tension that had built in her stomach from their previous predicament. "I don't know, between you clipping the guns on our pursuers, and our pilot evading a couple thousand rounds of enemy fire, I'd say we've already made history." Liara said.

"Yeah, we made history by getting our asses kicked." Wrex retorted.

"We got our asses bruised a bit." Garrus replied. "We managed to get out of that mess still functional though, so I'd count that as a win."

The view of the planet suddenly turned slightly when the balance of power between the remaining three engines shifted away from the heavily damaged starboard engine, causing the _Digeris_ to spin to the right and begin tilting before Tali was able to correct the problem down in Engineering.

A single beat of silence passed before Garrus added to his previous statement with "…Well, mostly functional."

While the others chuckled at that, the Asari pilot was mostly frustrated. The ship had taken too many hits despite her attempts to avoid the enemy fire. While she knew it was hardly her fault that the first contact scenario went to hell faster than anybody could have expected, she still felt responsible for the amount of damage the _Digeris_ had accumulated, going back over moments in their narrow escape where she could have pulled different maneuvers, or tried harder to predict the hostile's pattern of fire. Still, she could hardly complain, considering how they managed to survive the ordeal, with a little help, so she did her best to stay upbeat as she guided the ship through the remaining space between them and the planet, the once swift and shining vessel now crawling through the void, scorch marks, melted metal and exposed circuitry marring her surface. She absentmindedly tossed a glance at the short range scanner's display, then did a double take when she caught sight of two yellow blips, positioned on either side of their stern, a few hundred meters behind them. She thought for sure there hadn't been anything on the scanners a second ago.

"Sir, we seem to have something else on our tail." The pilot stated, her tone more annoyed than worried, bringing up the display for the rear cameras to get a look at the unexpected arrivals. The reason for their inexplicable appearance was made apparent when Garrus and the others got a look at what was happening behind them. Two ships seemed to be slowly materializing as they made their way out of what appeared to be swirling masses of darkness, the ships themselves having a "T" shaped appearance from the front, a vertical spine running down the middle of the vessel with a flat surface slapped on top of the spine. The overall design of them, combined with the intricate markings etched into the unknown craft, caused Liara to note that they bore an unsettling resemblance to giant sarcophagi.

"Let me guess." Wrex started, amusement tinging his words. "These guys are gonna fire at us without even saying anything too?"

"Did you not just see how they popped up out of nowhere?" Liara asked. "By the Goddess, what kind of technology do these people have?"

"Eh, it doesn't matter much to me." Wrex replied casually. "I haven't had a chance to crack any skulls yet, so this has been a fairly boring trip so far. Heh, not including our little joyride back there, of course."

"You call that a joyride?" Liara questioned in near outrage.

"I'm Krogan." Wrex responded simply, as If that alone was a sufficient answer.

"Hey, guess what?" the pilot called out to them, false elation seeping from her words. "They just fired at us." She deadpanned.

"What a surprise." Wrex commented sarcastically.

"I know, it's like everyone in this system is half Krogan or something." The pilot retorted.

Liara was just about to reprimand the pilot for her barbed remark when Wrex laughed. "Not bad. But if everyone in this system _was_ part Krogan, we'd have been cooked long before now."

"Pardon me." Liara said, raising a hand. When everyone had turned to face her, she continued. "If they fired at us, how have we not been hit yet?"

"Oh, well if I can direct your attention to the rear facing cameras." The pilot responded sardonically, making a sweeping motion with her hand toward the display next to her. "And here we have the slowest damn projectiles I have ever seen. Honestly, we could be _derelict_ and I could still evade that shit."

Sure enough, a quartet of burning purple spheres originating from both ships were ponderously making their way over to them, almost comically slow.

"All the same, if we could move out of their path sooner rather than later, that would be preferable." Garrus said.

"Aye aye, sir." The Flight Officer responded, only a little sarcasm infusing her words. She brought the ship in a quick turn to starboard to carry them out of the path of the enemy fire, then promptly ate all of the mockery she had tossed at their would-be assailants when the advancing orbs altered course to follow their movement.

"What!?" the pilot screeched. "We have no lock-on warning! What the _fuck_ is this?!"

"Do we have enough engine capacity to outmaneuver them?" Garrus asked, kindly ignoring her less than professional outburst.

The Asari set her mouth in a hard line as she kept the ship pointed at the nearby planet. "Back before we got shot to hell? Sure, no problem. Now? Unless the Quarian can work some kind of mechanical magic on our propulsion, all I can do is try and get close enough for the planet's gravity to give us some extra speed and just outrun these assholes."

"I managed to get some quick scans of those weird projectiles." Tali reported through their omnitools. "And Keelah, do _not_ let any of them connect, or we're going to end up as an oversized crater on that planet's surface. They may not move fast, but they're packing an enormous amount of energy, and they'll pass right through our kinetic barriers."

"Can we try and send a distress signal to that city? Maybe they could send more reinforcements?" Liara asked, her voice quivering.

"Just now tried that." The pilot answered. "They seem to have acknowledged it, but I don't see any cavalry riding in to save us, so I'm guessing they sent out all their ships just to pull us out of the first mess." She sighed and shook her head before continuing. "All due respect, Captain, but if we survive here, I am going to demand so much hazard pay for this bullshit…"

"I'll pull as many damn strings as I can to make sure you get it." Garrus replied.

There was a tense moment on their approach where the sluggish spheres became worryingly close to them, but thankfully, the _Digeris_ lurched forward as it was caught in the planet's gravity, the crippled vessel picking up speed as it started to descend into the layers of clouds permeating the atmosphere.

"Okay." The pilot breathed a sigh of relief. "So, as long as our poor girl can hold together on entry here, and as long as those stupidly slow homing balls are the only method of attack those idiots can throw at us, we should be clear, more or less."

"Didn't those ships teleport in behind us before?" Liara questioned.

The pilot's body went rigid as her eyes widened. "Please don't say that." She almost begged.

"We've still got them on scanners, they're still way back there." Garrus reassured.

"No." Lia clarified. "I mean, if there are more of them, they might try to-" whatever Liara might have finished with died before leaving her lips when they pierced a particular blanket of billowy white clouds. Another one of those strange masses of twisting dark shadows appeared, the bow of a third sarcophagus-like ship pushing its way out of the distorted portal.

Directly in front of them.

"SHIT!" the pilot screamed, slamming her hands down on the controls to try and veer away in time, but it was too late, her quick reaction only managing to avoid a head-on collision, while the port side unleashed a horrific squeal as metal scraped violently across metal, their kinetic barriers collapsing entirely from the high-speed crash before their two remaining engines smashed into the other ship, knocking them out of alignment, and sending the _Digeris_ into a spinning dive toward the planet. The massive impact also disrupted the mass effect field in the ship, causing anything not securely strapped down to fly wildly through the interior, ordinary objects suddenly becoming potentially dangerous missiles.

"All hands, brace for impact!" Garrus roared into his omnitool, knowing nobody would be able to safely make it to the escape pods with the mass effect field down, and the ship tumbling madly.

Liara tried desperately to find some peace in what could be her last moments, as befitting of an Asari, but she could not. She was not ready to die.

 _Oh Goddess, protect us._ She silently prayed in despair.

 **My goodness, I have no excuse for how long it took to get this chapter out. Too much time floofing about when I could be writing. Sorry about that. Also, I feel like an ass for not saying this in my first little note, but seriously, a hearty thanks to everyone who has followed, favorited, and reviewed this little story, it's awesome how nice you all have been, which makes me feel even worse since this chapter is arguably the worst so far, in my opinion. Oh well**

 **Quick mention, in case anybody is confused about Cayde's miniature exposition on the 'classes' of Destiny. The way I see it, the Titans have their immense strength, the Warlocks, their unrivaled intellect (and crazy space magic). Since the Hunter doesn't seem have an abundance of either of these, what does a Hunter do? Fight dirty…It made sense to me, anyway.**

 **Also, I'm pretty sure I PM'd somebody and told them that Shepard would be appearing in this chapter. I do apologize, there was no effort to be deceitful, I had originally planned to have Shepard pop up here, but it just didn't work out that way, forgive me.**

 **Finally, I suppose I should do the whole 'Bungie owns Destiny, Bioware owns Mass Effect, I own nothing' thing, just in case.**

 **Till next time.**

 **EDIT: Sorry to get your hopes up(Surely, you didn't think the likes of myself could somehow churn out a new chapter that fast?), but this is just a little update to fix some glaring errors that bugged me half to death when I found them. Also, a shoutout is in order for one deathwing17 for pointing out a stupidly large problem with the end bit that my sleep deprived brain completely missed, thanks for that.**


	4. The Galaxy's Most Eloquent Diplomat

The Sun was shining with rapturous light as it spread its rays through gently rolling clouds before reaching the snow dusted terrain, illuminating the coarse shrubbery, sparse trees, and various sized and shaped boulders dotting the softly curving hills and craggy outcroppings of rock that shaped the area. The landscape was littered by the fractured remains of hulking aircraft, the now rust-covered metal behemoths resting near a bluff that drop several meters into a dark, frigid lake. Towering above the earth, twin spires of steel scaffolding stood in a silent vigil over a wide platform that sat upon one of the larger formations of stone jutting out from the ground. Sat atop this former launching pad was one of the old colony ships, its cold surface gleaming in the noonday light. It stood upright, pointing toward the sky in hope, but it would never see the star-speckled void it was meant to reach, its engines cold and quiet, the launch pad in disrepair with cracks running along its surface and corroded pipes empty of the fuel they were designed to carry to the ship. This pattern was repeated three more times, other platforms and colony ships arrayed in a line that stretched a number of miles, the space-faring craft rising above the scenery like great steeples of metal. Precious little wildlife could be found here, not much beyond the occasional bird flitting from the stunted trees, and small rodents moving swiftly across the intermittent snow before burrowing into their hollows. To the casual observer, the scene had a calm, peaceful feel to it, but just beneath the surface of the tranquil setting, there was tension. Small creatures peeking out carefully from their hiding places, eyes and ears wide on alert, jittery and nervous. The limbs of the scattered evergreens trembling in the wind, yet the sound they made seemed almost muted, as if the trees themselves were attempting to suppress any potential noise they made. All of nature appeared to be holding its breath in silent anticipation.

For a Hunter was on the prowl.

The stealthy Guardian would remain crouched behind whatever suitable cover he could find, his pale cloak and armor making him difficult to spot against the snow at his feet, before dashing forward, silent yet swift, as he raced to the next large patch of brush, or sufficiently sized boulder to shield himself from any prying eyes. The Hunter's sneaky approach brought him to the tip of a wing from one of the derelict aircraft that had buried itself in the ground after the wing on the opposite side had been torn off. The Guardian crept upwards in a crouch to the middle portion atop the plane, mindful of suppressing any noise he could make on the creaking steel, before spotting his quarry.

Three Fallen. Two Dregs accompanied by a rust bucket of a Shank, digging through some old piece of machinery.

The Awoken Hunter stayed in his hunched over position for a brief moment, before standing with a huff and bringing his arms up in a shrug. Why had he spent so much time, carefully staying out of sight, to sneak up on such meager, almost pitiful enemies?

He was incredibly, unequivocally, inescapably _bored_.

What was he going to do, rush down there with a mighty roar, snap off three flawless headshots on the unsuspecting scavengers, as he had done more times than he cared to count, then walk away as if nothing happened? No, that would not do.

He stepped off of the plane via the same wing he had used to climb up it, not even bothering to mask the sound that the Fallen probably wouldn't even notice, before coming face to face with his two companions. The Hunter internally sighed at bright mismatch of red and blue coloring the thick armor plating of the imposing EXO to his right. That poor robot had _no_ understanding of style. The woman to his left, thankfully, possessed some fashion sense, her flowing purple vestments looking almost impractical, but she made it work, with dark mosaic pieces fitting together to form an image of a sun around the lower portion of the robes. The teal pauldron on her left shoulder was a nice touch, too.

"You done playing super secret agent man yet?" the unnaturally deep voice of Bastion-17 drawled, the EXO's tone expressing either boredom or annoyance at the Hunter for attempting to have some kind of fun on their dreary assignment.

The Hunter, Tiil, silently held up a finger, before walking a few meters past the two other Guardians, then turned to face the direction where he knew the Fallen interlopers to be. He took in a deep breath through the air filters in his helmet, then started to move, muttering as he weaved an jagged path forward.

"Seconds left on the clock, he drives toward the hoop, dancing past defenders." He said, performing flourishing spins around each of his fellow Guardians, causing his cape to fly into their helmeted faces, which they swatted at irritably. "The clock is ticking down, he finds an opening, he takes the shot!" A black cylinder materializes in his hand, which he tosses into the air in a high arc toward the Fallen, a red light flashing in timed intervals from one end of the cylinder. "And he takes another shot!" he added, snatching the handcannon off of its place on his thigh and lining up the holographic dot floating just above the gun's barrel before releasing a precise shot that impacted the explosive device right as it dropped to eye level with the Fallen, causing it to erupt in a fireball as it detonated.

Tiil took a few seconds to admire the light show, then slowly turned to face his allies. "And that, my good friends," he began, absently spinning the heavy caliber pistol on his finger before returning it to its previous position. "Is the maximum amount of fun any of us will be able to have on this lovely little patrol."

Arms crossed, the mechanical Titan admitted grudgingly, "Ok, that was pretty impressive."

Hands on her hips, the Human Warlock shook her head wryly. "It wasn't a bad shot, but you've been watching _way_ too many of those pre-Traveler sports archives." She teased.

"They're educational." Tiil argued. "I've been able to glean so much about human history from them. For example, I've discovered that pre-Traveler humans were…very strange."

" _Were_ strange?" Bastion-17 joked.

Shepard poked the EXO's chest plate. "Hey, you don't get to make fun of us." She warned. "We _invented_ you."

Bastion-17 absently rubbed at the spot where his comrade's finger connected with him, despite the fact that he wouldn't have been able to feel it even if his armor hadn't been in the way. "Yeah, too bad you can't even remember how you invented us…" he muttered.

"Not our fault." She retorted.

A subtle noise and small flash of light next to Tiil heralded the appearance of the Hunter's Ghost, who he had affectionately named Sparky. "Not to be a killjoy here, but we should probably get back to finishing our patrol." The voice of the floating aide was uniquely feminine for a Ghost, something that wasn't necessarily unheard of, but still uncommon.

Tiil's head tilted slightly as a thought occurred to him. "Speaking of our patrol, tell me again why we were chosen for this? I mean, not to sound arrogant, but we were part of the strike team that turned Atheon into scrap metal, yet now they have us doing blue milk runs out here in the middle of nowhere? Not to say that eliminating people who want to exterminate us isn't fun, but you can only kill the same group of enemies so many times before it gets mind-numbingly tedious"

"So many times, meaning once?" Bastion-17 questioned.

"Exactly."

"Every fireteam gets some boring runs here and there, Tiil. We'll get back in the action soon enough" Shepard reminded him. "Besides, if every mission involved taking on assholes like Atheon or Skolas, there wouldn't be any Guardians left."

"True, but even as far as the patrol itself, don't tell me either of you haven't noticed how scarce the Fallen have become lately." He responded, making a sweeping motion with his arm across the sprawling landscape. "This old launch site and the surrounding areas used to be teeming with those four-armed idiots. Now, we can hardly find enough of them to even bother with, much less warrant sending a full fireteam to clean them out."

Shepard didn't have an answer to that. It was true, the Fallen's numbers on Earth had been dwindling lately, and not just because of the Guardian's efforts to push them back. Whole platoons and even some minor Fallen houses had seemingly up and left, with no indication of where they were going or why they were giving up control of the sections of the planet they had carved out for themselves.

"Eh, they're probably nervous." Bastion-17 reasoned. "After the House of Kings lost some of their barons, and especially after the Wolves got smashed, I bet the other houses figured it's not worth it to tangle with us on our home soil. Besides, with fewer Fallen screwing with us around here, we can start pushing past the Wall more often, so I'm all for it."

A second subdued noise signaled the arrival of Shepard's Ghost. "Heh, speaking of getting smashed, you guys hear that Shaxx is putting together another Crucible event like the last one?"

A grin split Shepard's face. "You mean the Drunk Team Deathmatch? Guardians stumbling around everywhere trying to kill each other while completely hammered?" the Warlock fondly recalled all of the good laughs she and many others had gotten out of that little event. Maybe not as "professional" as Lord Saladin's Iron Banner, but she'd argue that Drunk Crucible was far more entertaining. Hell, she might even jump in this time around. Kicking ass and drinking alcohol were definitely up there as her favorite pastimes.

Shepard didn't need x-ray vision to know that Tiil likely wore an expression similar to her own underneath his helmet. "Joker, why do I get the feeling you would try to join that arena if you were able to?" he asked.

Joker did his best to convey a shrugging motion, which was surprisingly successful. "I'd definitely do it, if I could hold a weapon, and if Ghosts shared that EXO subroutine for 'drunk off your ass.'"

Bastion-17 let out a static-tinged sigh. "Still don't get why we have that…"

"Probably a social thing." Shepard replied.

"Hold up, someone from the Tower is trying to get in touch with us." Sparky informed them, her form splitting apart and radiating light as she relayed the incoming transmission.

"Tower Actual to fireteam Dawn Hammer, be advised, the unknown vessel we notified you about earlier is in orbit, but they're sending a distress signal. Looks like some tomb ships appeared behind them." Commander Zavala relayed to them. "We need you to jump in your ships and get to their position to make sure the Hive don't add to the damage they've already sustained."

They had been informed about the mystery ship and their Fallen attackers a little while ago, though they were assured that the squadron of Guardian fighters being sent out would be sufficient to handle the situation. Tiil had been fairly annoyed that they were unable to use the deadly chase as an excuse to get out of having to do their patrol. Better in hindsight that they had stayed here.

"How many tomb ships can you detect?" Shepard questioned, the trio of Guardians walking toward the cliff overlooking the icy water as their Ghosts summoned their respective fighters.

"Two so far. The unknowns seem to be distancing themselves from the Hive, looks like they're about to hit the upper atmosphere. Exact coordinates for their entry vector are being sent to your Ghosts now"

Shepard caught movement from the corner of her eye, and turned to see Tiil lifting his sniper rifle to the visor of his helmet, his left hand tweaking some of the small knobs situated on the left side of the weapon's scope, likely to aid his vision in piercing the intermittent cloud cover.

"Can you feed me those coords, Sparky?" The Awoken requested.

"Already done."

Tiil thanked her, and brought his rifle to aim at the spot where his HUD was showcasing the entry point for the ship. He hummed in thought when his crosshairs lined up with the object he was searching for. "Hard to tell from here, but it looks like the Fallen did not play nice with them. Can't see the Hive ships, they might have backed off." He noted

"We've still got them on scanners, but yes, the distance between them and the unknowns has increased." Zavala informed them.

"Why bother even showing up if you're just gonna back down?" Bastion-17 wondered aloud.

"Couldn't tell you." Tiil responded absently, his gaze still fixed toward the sky. "But they'll need to realign their trajectory if they want the fastest route to the To-" Tiil cut off the end of his own sentence with a stifled gasp as his shoulders jumped slightly.

"What is it?" Shepard questioned anxiously.

"They impacted a Tomb ship that jumped right in front of them, they had no chance of getting clear in time." Zavala said grimly.

"They're spiraling out of control, doesn't look like they'll be able to recover." Tiil warned them.

Shepard whipped around to face her Ghost. "Joker, can you estimate where they're going to crash?"

"Uhhhh…" Joker mumbled as he frantically attempted to calculate the impact point for the rapidly descending vessel. "Best guess is the Forgotten Shore."

Shepard winced when she heard that. "That's going to be bad for them. Either they'll slam onto some of the rock formations, or crash into the rusted shipwrecks there." She put her hand to her forehead as she shut her eyes tightly, mentally grasping for some kind of solution to this emergency. Her eyes popped back open as an idea came to her. "Our ships were equipped with those prototype tractor beams a few weeks ago. Could we use those to help slow their descent?" she questioned.

Joker's 'eye' squinted as his form shook from side to side. "Our ships are still 45 seconds away." He lamented. "The unknown vessel is less than 35 seconds from impact."

The Guardians looked on in grim dejection as the damaged ship hurtled closer and closer, its shape becoming more distinct as it neared the earth. Bright orange flames could be seen flickering angrily across its port side, and the vessel's stern was covered in scorch marks. Despite its erratic movement, they could pick out various symbols running down the length of the vessel, though the language was foreign to them.

"Twenty seconds to impact." Joker informed them morosely.

Angry at her inability to alter the events that were to shortly take place, Shepard began swiftly marching in the direction of the soon-to-be crash site for the wayward ship. "Mount up." She ordered, assuming a hunched over position as she spread her feet apart and brought her hands forward. This pose might have been a little humorous were it not for the burst of light emanating beneath her that coalesced from a flash of pale illumination into the sleek lines and sturdy construction of a two-pronged speeder bike that hovered gracefully in the air, it's single engine ignited and ready to rapidly carry the Warlock to the Forgotten Shore. Shepard could see from the corner of her eye that her squadmates were similarly astride their respective vehicles, prepared to follow her lead. The Warlock had no idea as to what they would do, but sitting around doing nothing was not something that she particularly cared for. She pressed both pedals forward, causing the lightweight speeder to jump forward as it began to race across snow covered terrain and exposed patches of dirt. Shepard shifted around in her seat to peer behind her, the falling ship now much closer to them as it continued to twist and tilt through the air in its deadly descent.

For Shepard, protecting people from harm wasn't just something she wanted to do, it was expected, often even demanded of a Guardian, which made her all the more upset now that she found herself in a crisis where she could do absolutely nothing to help these newcomers. They were just a handful of seconds away from crashing into the earth at terrifying speeds, it would take nothing short of a miracle for these people to survive.

[][][][][][][]

If Tali managed to pull this off, she was going to find the idiots who mocked her for buying the prototype mag-boots that she was currently wearing, and smugly inform them that she used those boots to save a freaking stealth frigate.

When the _Digeris_ collided with that unknown vessel, the young Quarian had gone into panic mode, which essentially involved standing at her terminal, using the aforementioned magnetic footwear to counteract the turbulent movement of the ship, though she still had to brace her knees on the underside of the console when things got particularly bumpy, and furiously typing every command and override she could think of to solve this problematic situation. It took precious few seconds for the tech genius to realize what was wrong. The moment the mass effect generator was damaged, the secondary power generator kicked in, an ancillary producer of energy that wasn't effective enough to maintain separate ship gravity, but could still keep most other vital systems operable, which would have allowed them to activate the stabilization thrusters and utilize them to arrest or at least slow their dive toward the planet's surface. The thrusters located on the port side were showing up on her monitor with a red _no power_ symbol flashing next to them, a trait that was shared by several other subsystems. The Flight Officer had shouted through her omni-tool about the unreliable thrusters, amid various colorful exclamations in multiple languages. The Quarian's deft tri-fingered hands brought up the diagrams detailing the secondary generator and the miles worth of cables that connected it to most major onboard systems, focusing on the lengths of conductive wiring meant to feed energy to the thrusters to try and determine what was causing the lack of power, and what could be done in order to rectify it. Power flow from the generator was good, it continued in an unbroken line along the cables inside the left wall of the storage area, until…

There, a gap in the wiring where the impact from the alien vessel had caused the metal wall on the port side of the _Digeris_ to cave inward, severing the circuitry running to half of the total available thrusters. Unless she could get over there and repair the damage in time, her warning of this ship becoming a crater on the planet's surface would become an unwitting prophecy.

She was an engineer, not a damn fortune teller.

"Found the problem, I should be able to make it over there and fix it." Tali informed Garrus through her omni-tool, having already succinctly explained her immunity to the ship's erratic gravity.

"Okay, but be careful, Tali." Garrus warned.

"Don't worry about me. If I can get the thrusters back online, that's all that matters."

Tali steeled herself, then deactivated the magnetic lock on her right boot, and nearly regretted it when a harsh twist in the ship's descent caused her now free foot to fly upward, almost forcing her into doing an impromptu split. She brought her leg back down with a sharp _clang_ as the boot once again contacted metal, her right foot now facing the doorway that would take her out into the storage area. This time she was prepared, the muscles of her left leg already flexed toward the goal of bringing her other foot about, whipping her leg around the instant the mag-lock was released as her boot scraped across the cold floor, and stopped short as the mag-lock took effect again. This would be possible, but tricky: she would have to perform a kind of shuffling walk, sliding her boots over the smooth metal in order to make her way to the damaged wiring while the ship was still locked in its violent tumble. She was immensely thankful that she had little difficulty with motion sickness, or this attempt at an emergency repair would be far more challenging than it already was. It was slower going than she would have liked, and her boots had a tendency to stick to the floor somewhat even after the lock had been released, but it was necessary if she wanted to avoid getting tossed around like a varren in a thresher maw nest. She managed to cross the space from engineering over to the entrance to storage quickly enough, but she was momentarily caught off guard when the door opened to reveal an armored boot flying straight for her. Instinct took over as she arched herself backwards to avoid the weighted projectile, trusting her mag-boots to keep her on her feet. Bringing herself back up, she took in the utter chaos that had consumed the near-cavernous storage area. The port side wall had been hit hard, most of it warped inward, with many exposed wires and tubes leaking either liquids or bright sparks. She had been entirely too focused on her task in engineering to notice the cacophony of sounds that were being generated by dozens of sundry items that had apparently been freed from their respective storage lockers lined up on the port-side wall, piercing crashes and loud thuds sounding off as everything not fully secured flew in a wild hurricane of assorted armor pieces, moderately sized metal crates, and a myriad of firearms.

This was going to suck.

Tali put her arms up near her head in an approximation of a guard stance, doing what she could to fend off some of the heavier items to minimize possible injury as she made her way to the mangled wiring. She knew that the smaller projectiles wouldn't have enough force behind them to trigger her kinetic barrier, while the larger objects being hurled about, such as the crates of supplies the requisitions officer had left lying around, would be more of a problem, unable to do anything regarding them other than hope that her barrier would be enough to protect her from such an impact. She trudged on through the storm of improvised projectiles, trying to dodge what errant missiles she could, and block what she couldn't as she shuffled her way over to the damaged section of circuitry. Despite the almost constant sounds coming from the varied items slamming into everything, Tali could hear an odd creaking noise emanating from the other side of the room that seemed to be synched with each flip of the _Digeris_. Tali stole a glance to her right while continuing to skid her boots across the floor, and was thankful for it as she had just enough warning to duck as a compacted M-23 Katana shotgun sailed over her head, clanging off of the wall next to her. She reached out and snatched the weapon before the unstable gravity of the ship tossed it away again, determining to apologize to the owner of the firearm for what she was planning on using it for.

Assuming they survived this, of course.

She slapped the weapon onto the small magnetic plate on the back of her suit to keep it secure as she plodded up to the dented section of the storage wall, sparks flying out from the exposed wiring on the left side of the damaged area. The Quarian did her best to squat down while her boots remained secured to the floor as she grabbed the shotgun with her right hand, and brought up her omni-tool as the glowing apparatus shimmered into being around her left arm. One of the many functions an omni-tool was capable of performing was the utilization of a miniature fabrication module to break down certain ceramics or metals and reconstruct those materials into different items, provided whatever item being constructed was not too large. In this case, she would break down the metal components of the shotgun and reshape them into conductive wiring to bridge the gap between the exposed cables. She knew the alloy from the shotgun would not be an ideal conductor, but she was not in a position to complain, given the dearth of options at this point.

Tali had just finished inputting the sequence to begin the fabrication process when she remembered that the newly constructed wiring was not anchored to anything. She jammed the firearm in between her knees as she scrambled to grasp the repurposed material, her fist closing around the strip of metal before the frenzied movement of the ship managed to fling it away from her. She assumed the repair kit containing her tools was one of the many items being hurled in every direction, so she would need an alternate means for fusing the fabricated wire with the existing one. She was about to try one such method when she both heard and felt a heavy impact behind her, whirling her upper half around to spot one of the bulky crates crashing towards her across the floor. She had no time to react, and would have likely been unable to avoid the reinforced container anyway, so she thanked whatever benevolent deity who was apparently looking out for her when the ship spun in such a way so as to cause the cartwheeling crate to smash into the wall just inches to her left, the proximity to such an impact causing the sound alone to be painful.

Tali blew out a shaky breath. The chances of her getting crushed would become higher and higher the longer she remained here. Not even mentioning the fact that they would all die anyway if she failed.

She attempted to work as fast as was feasible as she lined up the wire in her hand with the third cable from the floor, trying to keep her hands from trembling despite the panic growing like ice in her gut, then halted the fabrication process in order to utilize one of the more aggressive functions of the omni-tool. A blast of fire shot out from the holographic device, a concentrated burst of intense heat normally employed to melt through reinforced armor plating, though this particular incendiary shot was powered down enough so as to fuse the two lengths of wiring together, rather than reduce them to slag. Even so, the fiery discharge was bright enough to momentarily hamper the engineer's vision, despite her faceplate's filters, and she was close enough to the small detonation for her shields to be impacted. Tali shook her head to try and clear the large blank spot in her eyesight in order to inspect her handiwork, and, sure enough, the severed end of the old wiring had nicely melded with the newly made cable.

One down, one to go.

She had deliberately merged her length of wiring to the exposed cable on the right considering that the wires on the other side were live, knowing full well that once the two ends of metal made contact, she would be hit with a significant amount of electricity, so depending on how severely such an electrical surge could adversely affect her, she would have to get them fused on the first try. Amidst all the weapons and armor pieces causing a racket as they bounced off the walls, floor, ceiling, and occasionally Tali herself, her ears caught a sharp _snap_ that pierced the air a short distance behind her. While she was wary of wasting what little time remained, she needed to make sure that something else was not about to try and turn her into a Quarian pancake, so she turned her head to look in the direction the sound came from as her omni-tool started the fabrication process back up, finishing the final inches on the length of wiring. Being this close to saving the damn ship might have given Tali joy were it not for the fact that she had figured out what exactly had caused the unusual noise.

The Ground Recon and Assault Vehicle (GRAV for short, a name that Tali found unimaginative and was convinced that it was only named that because nobody could come up with anything better.) was currently bucking wildly in its place on the other side of the room, the creaking noise she had noticed earlier and the more recent clamor both being a result of the cables strapping the bulky, six-wheeled vehicle to the floor.

Actual cables. Cables that were straining to keep the immense weight of the attack vehicle down and inhibit it from joining the many other objects in their errant flight throughout the room, one of these cables having already failed in that objective. Tali had a sneaking suspicion that the original design incorporated an industrial-sized mag-plate to ensure that the vehicle remained immobile even in extreme circumstances, such as the one they were currently experiencing. Apparently somewhere along the design process, a greedy little bastard of a Volus handling the finances for the construction of the _Digeris_ got his hands on the schematics, and decided to cut corners by switching out the mag-plate for the much less reliable cables just to save a little money.

You. Fucking. _Bosh'tet_.

The fabricated wiring only needed a few more seconds to span the gap to the exposed circuitry, but Tali knew that it would be a few seconds too long, the remaining straps attempting to restrain the armored vehicle popping off one by one as each successive failure of a cable led to the weakening of the persisting ones. Tali was straining as she yanked on the unfinished length of wiring to try and force it into contact with the backup generator's circuitry, she was so close to fixing this…

Too late.

The GRAV tore through its remaining restraints like a feral beast breaking out of its cage, the entire storage room shuddering from the force of the bulky vehicle's armored upper portion slamming into the floor as it barreled forward with bone-shattering momentum at the Quarian engineer. Tali had no choice but to disengage her mag-boots, flinging herself to the left as the full weight of the vehicle crashed into the spot she had just vacated, the GRAV standing upright against the wall for only a moment before the ship's gravity carried it further up the wall toward the ceiling.

A course that Tali followed as well, considering that she was no longer secured to the floor.

She had fully intended to snap her boots back onto the floor as quickly as possible, but the unpredictable gravity caught her its grasp before she could manage it, the Quarian tumbling up the wall alongside the GRAV as smaller objects pelted the both of them. Tali had already reactivated her mag-boots, but it took a few seconds before she was able to get her feet underneath her, the magnetic footwear snapping onto the heavily damaged wall. She was about to begin a quick shuffle walk back down the wall when she noticed that her left boot was set higher than her right, and that it was also still sliding across the metal surface despite the magnetic lock being active. She glanced down to see that the offending boot had actually latched onto one of the various firearms skidding around and into her. Tali switched off her left mag-boot and shook her leg to get rid of the weapon, but it remained attached for some reason, though her leg's movement caused it to wobble somewhat rather than staying flush against the bottom of her foot. What in the…

Oh, right. Electromagnets retained a small portion of their magnetic properties for a few seconds after being deactivated.

She was in the process of reaching down and yanking the damn gun off of her sole when another Geth-cursed crate came rocketing at her, forcing her to dislodge the other mag-boot and tuck into an awkward somersault over the high-speed container or possibly risk losing a leg. Both mag-boots reactivated, she landed hard back onto the wall, this time her footwear thankfully gun-free, and immediately began making her way back to the nearly finished repair job below her. Tali risked a glance over to the out of control GRAV on her left, which had managed to crash its way up to the ceiling, so she seemed to be in the clear, for the most part. She had almost made it back down when she felt the gravity shift back toward the floor and to the stern, as if the ship was just beginning to go nose up. This change in orientation was initially welcome to the wall climbing engineer, until she felt her footing tremble from powerful impacts that hit in quick succession. She had no need or desire to look over her shoulder, the terrible sounds and the feeling of her stomach trying to claw its way through her throat clued her in.

The GRAV was about to fall right on top of her.

It was still a few meters before she reached the floor, but Tali had no choice other than to disengage the mag-locks and drop, the hard impact with the floor painfully jarring her feet and legs. The heavy landing forced her into a crouched position, her knees reaching up to her chest. Tali almost didn't reactivate her mag-boots, fully intending to leap away as quickly as possible, until she noticed where exactly she was sitting, and risked a glance up at the oncoming rush of reinforced alloy and death. The angle at which it was falling…Tali decided to make a gamble.

Rather than risk being moved away from her repair job again, she initiated her mag-boots, pushed herself flush against the wall, and watched as the hulking mass of the GRAV slammed to the floor on its right side, just a breath of air between engineer and vehicle.

Tali heaved a very much welcome sigh of relief as she watched the armored vehicle tumble toward the elevator that ferried people to the various decks aboard the _Digeris_. Finally in possession of a moment where she did not have to bob and weave around high-speed projectiles of questionable size, Tali performed an about-face as quickly as her mag-boots would allow, and snatched the length of wiring hanging limply to her left. She did not hesitate, snapping the two wires together while simultaneously firing off an incendiary blast from her omni-tool, finally fusing the circuitry together.

An action that not only restored much needed power to the thrusters, but also unleashed an excruciating storm of pain on the engineer, her vacuum-sealed suit lacking anything that could fully protect her from the high voltage jolt that was brought about by connecting the wires. Tali collapsed onto the metal floor, writhing in silent agony, every single nerve in her body somehow feeling both numb and alight with biting anguish, as if varrens were standing over her, ripping at her flesh. She willed oblivion to come, hoping for unconsciousness to arrive and allow her to escape this searing pain.

It was not long before her wish was granted, her mind slipping from reality as a tremendous impact shook the entire ship, heralding the _Digeris'_ collision with the planet.

[][][][][][][]

"So, what's it look like?" Shepard questioned, foot propped up on a rock with her hand resting on her knee. The fire team of Guardians were currently situated atop a snow-dusted bluff overlooking what they had called the Forgotten Shore, an isolated, frigid stretch of beach where the view was usually dominated by the rusted shipwrecks of archaic fishing boats and small passenger vessels partially buried in the dirt. Today, the vista of the rocky coastline was now taken up by the much larger and far more advanced shipwreck of the mystery spacecraft, which had managed to mostly avoid hitting the scuttled ships littering the area, save for their already damaged engines.

"Hmm…" Tiil hummed quietly as he squinted through the scope of his marksman rifle, his form crouching to Shepard's left. "…Well, it looks like they crashed."

Shepard's shoulders slumped forward as spun around to look at her Awoken squad mate, an unamused frown painted on her face, not at all discouraged by the fact that he could not see it. "Yes, thank you, I'm aware of that." She snarked, not in the mood for any of his antics. "I mean, what's the damage look like?"

Tiil muttered under his breath. "Eh, if you want specifics, be specific…" He quickly cleared his throat and explained what his scope was showing him when Shepard summoned a bright, flickering yellow flame in the palm of her hand. "Uh, yeah, aside from the obvious hurt their engines took prior to their sudden landing, the craft seems fairly intact. Port side looks like it went a couple rounds with Atheon and lost, but I'm guessing that's a result of their collision with the tomb ship. If there was any more damage sustained in the crash, it would be on the underside, but even then, they spared themselves a much longer repair time and a one-way trip to the afterlife by getting those little boosters active."

Shepard slowly nodded her understanding. She still could not quite believe it, one moment the ship was speedily approaching a violent destruction, the next it was suddenly decelerating as ports located on its belly sent out fiery plumes of heat, bringing the craft's speed down to a less lethal level. The vessel still hit the ground hard enough to cause the surrounding area to tremble for a brief moment, but Shepard agreed with Tiil's assessment: the damage could have been far worse.

"Makes you wonder why they didn't use those thrusters to begin with." Bastion-17 commented, who was currently kneeling to Tiil's left.

The Hunter gave a slight shrug. "There might've been something wrong, can't say for sure, but there is a way we could find out…" he trailed off, bringing his watchful eye away from his scope to glance at Shepard. "I'm assuming we're going to go down there and say hi to the new kids on the block?"

Shepard chewed her lower lip as her brow scrunched together in contemplation. "I don't know," she murmured, "Ignoring them obviously isn't an option, but we don't exactly have a shining record when it comes to first contact with a new species."

Bastion-17 nodded his agreement. "Yeah, we don't know for sure whether or not these guys are gonna go ape-shit the second they see us, so I'm not really into the idea of just walking up to them expecting smiles and handshakes."

Tiil brought his hand up in a calming gesture. "I understand what you mean, I'm certainly not suggesting we drop our guard in any way, but come on, they're hardly in a position to be hostile, given their current circumstances." He reasoned.

"That's never stopped the Hive or the Vex before." Shepard pointed out.

Tiil sighed, but conceded the point. "Regardless, you were right when you said we can't just ignore them. Somebody's going to have to go down there and greet the new neighbors." The Awoken turned his face toward Shepard, and she just _knew_ there was a damn smirk plastered on it underneath his helmet. "Need any pointers on what to say? We all know how shy and flustered you get when meeting new people."

"What makes you think I'm going down there?" Shepard retorted, her eyes narrowed.

"Why, process of elimination, of course." He stated matter-of-factly. "I'm the only one present who possesses competent skill with a sniper rifle, so I'd be the one to cover you in case things get nasty. Smiley here clearly isn't going to be making first contact since he's not exactly the most diplomatic of EXOs." Tiil gave the artificial humanoid a nod of his head. "No offense to you, Bastion."

The EXO in question had half a mind to respond to the 'smiley' comment with a jibe of his own, but he simply gave a shrug and a 'fair 'nuff'.

Tiil brought his visor back to face Shepard, and she was now certain he was giving her a stupid-looking grin. "Don't worry, we'll keep an eye on things." He assured her, only partially joking. "Bastion may have horrific accuracy with a sniper rifle, but he can at least use his enhanced vision to watch for anything suspicious."

Bastion-17 tilted his head in confusion. "What makes you think I have enhanced vision?"

Tiil paused. "You're an EXO?" he replied.

His reasoning was met with silence.

"You're mechanical?" the Hunter tried again.

Shepard merely raised an eyebrow in response, a facial expression Bastion-17 would have mirrored, had he been able to do so.

Tiil waved his hand dismissively. "It was a logical assumption."

The Titan shook his head. "You're an idiot."

Joker jumped into the conversation. "Hang on, Zavala's trying to get ahold of us again, patchin' him through."

"Dawn Hammer, be advised, the Hive ships that tried to ambush that mystery vessel are closing in on your location, and we suspect that they have support from Hive already on the ground. Secure that ship by any mea-" Whatever the Vanguard had to say was suddenly drowned out by grating shrieks that wailed over the comm line.

The Guardians let out pained yelps before Joker forcibly cut off the comm link. "What the hell was that?" Shepard demanded angrily.

"Uhh, I think the Hive are jamming our communications." Joker reported.

"So the Hive version of 'jamming our communications' is 'screaming really loudly across all channels'?" Bastion-17 asked, incredulous.

"Looks like it." Joker confirmed.

"Damn, can't say they're not creative." The EXO muttered.

Shepard sighed in resignation. "We're on the clock now, I'm going to have to get down there and try to warn them of what's coming." She turned to address her squad mates. "Bastion, if anybody, Hive or otherwise, starts attacking…"

"Charge in guns blazing, got it." Bastion-17 finished for her.

Tiil waggled his marksman rifle slightly. "And I can cover both of your asses from here, if and when it comes to that." He confirmed. "Just try to make a good first impression, Shepard, or you'll forever shame the Guardians and the Traveler."

The Warlock rolled her eyes. "No promises." She took in a deep breath, then stepped off the bluff to the hard-packed dirt several meters below.

[][][][][][][]

It took some time before Liara released her white-knuckled grip on the safety restraints crossed over her chest.

She had shut her eyes tightly during their descent to block out the altimeter that had been dropping at a blood curdling rate, as well as to avoid looking out the view screen that was wildly shifting between showing the sky and the ground at various angles. She wanted to believe that Tali would be able to rectify whatever was wrong, but as more and more seconds ticked by, she vainly attempted to clamp down on her rising terror. Then, suddenly, they had leveled out, the _Digeris_ slowing its own momentum as they neared the surface. The crash landing had left her with a sore everything, it felt like, but she was glad to be bruised and alive rather than dead.

Garrus was up in seconds, albeit stiffly, and was barking orders and checking on crewmembers as subordinates relayed casualty and damage reports to him.

"Thrusters are still operable, but it'll be slow going if we try to make it anywhere with them, sir."

"Sensors are going haywire, sir, I'll try and get someone who can figure out what the problem is."

"Sir, Assistant Engineer Sadik is reported dead on Deck 2."

"What about our Head Engineer?" Garrus questioned the Turian officer.

The subordinate offered Captain Vakarian a twitch of his mandibles. "We've tried to get in contact with her, but something seems to be wrong with her omni-tool, we can't raise her."

"Then get down there and give me visual confirmation that she's all right, because she's got one hell of a mess to deal with here." Garrus ordered.

A Salarian crewmember attempted to gain his attention. "That's not possible sir, the elevator is currently inoperable."

A faint scraping noise could be heard as Garrus dragged a sharpened talon down his forehead in irritation. "Use the starboard maintenance crawlspace, it runs through most of the ship."

"Sir. The Salarian snapped off a quick salute before attempting to find the appropriate hatch that would lead to his objective.

All this hustle and bustle, with people running everywhere, trying to repair this, or help with that, and here Liara was, still strapped to her chair as she kept her restraints in a death grip. She figured she ought to offer her aid as well, but what could she do? She had no understanding of circuitry, or mechanical repair. She was not that kind of doctor (though she admitted that it did not take a medical degree to know how to use medi-gel). Once again, she found herself stuck in a situation where her limited expertise seemed wholly unnecessary at the moment. Still, walking around pretending to be useful was at least somewhat preferable to being trapped in a chair. She was in the process of attempting to extricate herself out of her seat in the cockpit when a voice spoke up behind her.

"You doin' okay there, Doc?"

Liara started as she turned to see Wrex standing in the doorway to the cockpit, his question possibly suggesting genuine concern, or maybe he was just making sure she did not possess any severe injuries. Krogan faces were not good at displaying complex emotions. Or any emotions, for that matter.

"Thank you, Wrex, but I'm all right." Her shaky voice and trembling hands probably did little to fool the Battlemaster, but she had never been any good at acting anyway. Now, if she could just get her quivering fingers to unlatch this damn…

"Here, lemme get that for you." Wrex stepped forward and moved her hands aside, using his thick fingers in a surprisingly deft manner to quickly release her safety restraints. The Krogan put his sturdy hand underneath her forearm to steady her as she carefully rose to her feet. "Just walk it off, Doc. You're tough, a little crash landing isn't gonna stop you." Wrex assured her.

Liara managed a slight smile in thanks. "I appreciate that, Wrex." She did her best to look over the hulking shoulder of the Krogan toward the mess that was the interior of the ship. "You should probably get back there." She told him. "They'll need your help."

Wrex gave her a look that was suspiciously close to amusement before barking out a single laugh. "They'll need _us_ over there." He corrected her. "C'mon, we can find something for you to do."

Liara gave the Krogan a more open grin as she began following him out of the cockpit.

She stopped short when she passed the door that lead to the planet's surface.

Wrex noticed her hesitation. "Unless you've got something else in mind?" he wondered aloud.

She kept her eyes on the reinforced portal into a new world as she responded. "We all have that one thing we're good at, Wrex." She breathed softly. She made sure to check the condition of the atmosphere before releasing the hatch. Breathable.

"Mine is discovery."

Liara brought in a deep breath through her nose, blew it out through her mouth, and hit the door release.

The midday sun initially blinded her after spending time in the now darkened ship interior, but when her vision cleared, she was greeted with the sight of a gorgeous lake several meters in front of her, the sky reflecting clearly off of its surface. She began to take stock of the environment surrounding the large body of water: tall outcropping of rock with a dilapidated building situated on top of it, husks of what appeared to be ancient seafaring vessels, snow seeming to cover the majority of the area…

"It's quite chilly here." She commented, rubbing her gloved hands up and down her arms.

"Yeah." Wrex responded absently, his main focus fixed on looking for anything potentially hostile. His gaze quickly focused on something moving in their direction fast, only spotting it as it crested each mound of dirt or jumped over various boulders in its way. "We've got something coming our way." He warned.

Liara looked back at Wrex in puzzlement before turning back around to follow his line of vision. She caught sight of what the Krogan had noticed, and recognized what it was.

It was a speeder, of some kind. With a person seated atop it.

Liara responded without taking her eyes off of the approaching individual. "Wrex, get the Captain out here!"

She could barely hear him as he rushed back into the ship and yelled for Garrus, too excited to consider the fact that they could have signaled him via their omni-tools. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she slowly walked forward, her entire body tingling with nervous energy.

They were really abut to make contact with a new species.

In Liara's opinion, it took entirely too long before the new arrival finally closed the gap, the lithe speeder powering down just a few yards away from the archaeologist. The speeder bike was using some powerful propulsion tech to float almost lethargically off of the ground, but Liara paid it no heed as she closely studied the person now standing in front of her.

Female, if the anatomy was anything to go by. Body structure suggested something similar to that of an Asari, but the eye-catching purple robes covering the woman's body made it difficult to glean any more than that.

The mystery woman mad it easier for Liara when her armored helmet suddenly glowed bright blue, and seemed to dematerialize off of her head.

Definitely closer to Asari than any other Council race, but there were stark differences.

The woman's skin was pale, a handful of shades darker than the snow on the ground, with lips that were close to a shade of pink. Her fiery green eyes were filled with power, purpose. Without even saying anything, Liara could tell that this woman demanded respect. But the thing that threw her off was the chin-length mane of bright red…well, for lack of a better word, fur, on top of the woman's head. She had heard rumors that Quarians possessed something similar, but she had never seen it for herself. Of all the unusual things about the woman, this was by far the most alien to her, but she admitted that it did accentuate the woman's looks rather nicely.

"Can you understand me?"

Liara's eyes widened in shock. The woman had said something! But, she could not recognize the language. "I'm…I'm sorry, I don't…"

The stranger's look of guarded curiosity left her face as her eyes dropped to half lids and her mouth formed a solid line.

"Well, shit."

 **Yeah, I've got no excuse for how bloody late this chapter was. I kept fretting over it, and trying different things, but whatever, this half-baked bowl of alphabet soup is finally out.**

 **Now, this is the roughest of drafts, so I'll apologize in advance for the awful amount of errors it's gonna have. I figured I should just get something out at this point, and try to fix it later. I feel like an ass for saying this, given how much time I wasted where I could've been writing, but I appreciate all of the reviews, and the follows, and the favorites. I love that so many of you are interested in this story, so just as a fair warning: I've just started college classes, so my time is going to be much more limited, but I have no intentions of abandoning this story.**

 **Story-related note, I am sorry for the back-to-back cliffhangers, I had lots of stuff I wanted to throw into this chapter, but then things kept getting longer and longer (I know some of you may mention that I could've shortened the Tali bit, but she needed more time in the spotlight. And that bit was what I was stuck on for an inordinate amount of time, so it's all staying in.)so I figured I'd just save the really fun part for the next chapter (which will hopefully NOT take five weeks.)**

 **I'd write more, but it's late, I gotta get up early, I got college shit to do (ugh) so,**

 **Till next time.**


	5. Beach Party

"Joker, please tell me you can translate."

"I'm a pretty damn good Ghost, Shepard, but even I can't unlock an entire language barrier using only the tiny handful of words that this girl has spoken so far."

"Well, what about the symbols on the side of the ship?"

Although Joker currently lacked a physical form, his functions and memory running through the complex systems woven into the Warlock's resilient clothing at the moment, Shepard could tell that her Little Light was glaring at her.

"Oh yeah, I'm detecting roughly six or seven individual characters painted onto that ship, that'll absolutely help me unravel the intricacies of this people's spoken language!"

Shepard huffed in irritation. "At least I'm trying to come up with solutions here! What've _you_ come up with so far?"

"I've come up with the simple fact that there's no easy way to just learn a new language on the spot. You're gonna have to pantomime, or draw pictures in the snow, just do _something_ to let them know that corpse-like, flesh-eating monsters are out to get them."

Shepard noted that, while she and Joker continued back and forth, the blue girl had remained motionless, her eyes and mouth still fairly wide, though her shocked expression was slowly morphing into a confused one. Considering the fact that Joker's voice was not carrying beyond the confines of the Warlock's head, the poor girl probably thought Shepard was bat-shit crazy.

A sentiment that was more than likely shared amongst the various other aliens that had filtered out of the ship to witness Shepard's arrival, if their faces were anything to go by. The Warlock held no claim to any mastery of reading alien expressions, but the look of "The fuck is wrong with you?" was fairly universal, in her opinion.

And what in the fuck was this not-ghost thing floating around? Blue had deployed some kind of glowing orb, which Joker assured her was doing nothing beyond recording everything happening. If she had known that this interaction was going to be filmed and likely shown off to an indeterminate amount of aliens, she'd have put at least a little effort to prettying herself up a bit.

The big lizard guy (She figured calling him that might be a tad racist, but oh well.) had raced back into the ship when he and Blue Girl caught sight of her, no doubt the catalyst for so many of the ship's denizens streaming out of the main hatch to see her. Shepard had quickly taken stock of the more notable features displayed by the various humanoids in front of her, including blue skin, dark scales, and pairs of horns sat atop oddly elongated heads. She noted that Lizard Man seemed to be the only representative of his race among the crew, as far as she could see. She also took notice of the fact that Lizard Man had some kind of firearm in hand and, though he was not pointing it in her direction at the moment, she got the message loud and clear.

While the others present had an air of curiosity about them, Shepard was not about to mistake their casual poses for anything other than readiness to respond to any perceived hostile action taken by her. She could hardly fault them for their wariness, but she would still have to be careful, lest they decide it would be safer for them to start shooting and eliminate a potential threat.

Shepard was really not into the idea of slaughtering the new kids on the block.

 _"Wow, she's surprisingly similar to an Asari."_

 _"Been on a Red Sand binge lately? She doesn't look anything like an Asari."_

 _"I'm just saying, she's closer to looking like an Asari than anything else."_

 _"No way, she resembles a Quarian much more closely than an Asari. She's even got Quarian fur, although that color can't be natural."_

 _"You know, because this is a new species, it may not be a she. The anatomy for this race might work differently from any other."_

 _"She's got a pair of knockers underneath her chin, do you really need any more proof that we've got a female in front of us?"_

 _"Fuck off."_

The incessant mutterings of inscrutable conversation had been going on amongst the newcomers while she and Joker hashed it out on how to communicate to them that they would soon be under attack. Shepard held little doubt in her mind that she was the focal point for the discussions currently being held, but the exact nature of their words still eluded her.

Shepard braced the elbow of her right arm on the wrist of her left and brought her fist to her lips as various thoughts flickered through her mind. "Could you show some footage of the Hive to them? Give them a visual reference, and then I can try to convey to them that they're about to get ambushed by the creeps?" she speculated.

"…I suppose it could help." Joker admitted. "I'll start compiling what I've got on our Hive interactions, but you're still gonna need to figure out an alternate means of communication here."

At some point, one of the humanoids with faces covered in rough scales had walked up to stand next to Blue Girl, possibly a leader or officer of some kind, if the way he (she, it, whatever). carried himself was any indication. Scaly's exchange with the girl was as mysterious as ever, though she found the warbling sound of his speech quite interesting.

 _"Well, Liara, what can you tell me?"_

 _"Nothing beyond what you see already, I'm afraid. She's clearly not aggressive toward us, but without any ability to communicate, we're effectively stuck."_

 _"Do you have any readings from your omni-tool?"_

 _"My omni…Captain, I wasn't about to stand right in front of her and take scans of her! That would be impolite."_

 _"Normally, I would agree with you, but you said it yourself, we can't get anywhere if we can't understand each other. We just need something, anything to work with at this point."_

Considering that the overall structure of Blue Girl's face was very close to her own, Shepard was confident in believing that her discussion with Scaly had produced a conflicted expression on the alien woman's visage (Blue Girl's race could very well have considerably different meanings for each facial expression, but she'd stick with her assumption until proven otherwise). Blue Girl's uncomfortable expression did not last long before a more contemplative look took over her features.

 _"Captain, if you wish to take scans, that's your decision, but I may have another idea…"_

A faint flash of light caught Shepard's eye as Scaly started waving around a weird, orange, holographic thing in her general direction, the glowing device apparently wrapped around his arm. "What the hell is he doing, Joker?"

Her Ghost only hesitated a second before responding. "He's trying to scan you for information."

Shepard raised a single eyebrow in question. "Trying?"

"And failing." Joker confirmed. "I'm feeding that glowy thing a mountain of junk data."

The Warlock was unable to suppress a grin. "Showing off your humongous porn library?"

"Nope." Joker responded gleefully. "I'm showing off yours."

"Well then, let's hope he doesn't faint from shock over all of the disturbing images."

She was just about to ask Joker about that compilation of battles against the Hive when she realized that Blue Girl was tentatively reaching out to Shepard's face with both hands, hesitation written clearly on her face. "What the hell is _she_ doing?"

"I…don't know. Maybe it's a greeting, or…hmm…"

Lacking any helpful information from Joker, Shepard took one, then two steps back. While she was aware she might be messing up some kind of customary salutation, or something, she was not into people suddenly attempting to cup her face, and Blue Girl speaking what she assumed to be words of comfort upon realizing that Shepard was backpedaling did little to put her at ease.

"Her left arm…" Joker spoke suddenly.

Happy to have at least somewhat of a good excuse to halt the girl's curious advance, Shepard deftly reached out and caught Blue Girl's wrist in a firm but painless grip. Hindsight showed her that grabbing the woman may not have been the best course of action when everyone else present visibly tensed up, a number of them blatantly reaching for assorted weapons. Scaly reacted by quickly placing his hand on the elbow of the same arm Shepard had taken hold of, his face entirely unreadable, but there was hesitation in his movement, likely wanting to protect Blue Girl, but at the same time trying to avoid causing a potential incident.

" _Liara, what were you trying to do?"_

" _I was just…I didn't…I thought…"_

"Joker, please tell me I have an extremely good reason for grabbing her." Shepard pleaded.

"Should've asked that before, but, yeah. She's got one of those holographic things on her arm too."

Momentary confusion swept over Shepard as she tilted the appendage in her grasp to look under and around it. "She does?"

"Yeah, just…hang on." A burst of light flashed in front of Shepard as Joker emerged into his physical form. He brought his 'eye' to face the woman in front of him, then turned to look at the arm currently in the Warlock's hold. Blue Girl, while noticeably stunned at the Ghost's sudden appearance, seemed to get the message, doing whatever it was she needed to do in order to activate the device while using her free arm to wave down her comrades behind her, speaking what Shepard assumed to be words of reassurance to them.

Shepard took a second to inspect the device, now that she had one closer to her face that was not being waved about. The glowing, transparent apparatus floated in a circle a few inches above the woman's hand and down her forearm, its almost non-corporeal-looking form made up of various geometric shapes fitted together, all of them colored a bright orange.

Not exactly fashionable, in Shepard's opinion, but she supposed it could have some uses.

The Warlock figured she could let go of the woman's arm now that Joker was beginning to scan for whatever it was that he found so interesting in the device. Scaly likewise released his grip on Blue Girl and initiated what looked like a mildly ticked off stare down with Shepard. She could understand why he might be a little annoyed at her rash action, though that did not stop her from returning his disapproving gaze with a defiant look of her own. Hey, nobody ever claimed her to be a good diplomat.

She broke off eye contact with the alien in blue and black armor when, over Blue Girl's shoulder, she noticed someone, or more specifically, two someone's exiting the ship. One of the skinny, bi-horned aliens was helping a woman slowly make her way out into the glaring light of noonday, the girl's right arm slung over the shoulder of her aid. The intricately designed and noticeably snug vacuum suit and opaque visor made it impossible for Shepard to glean anything beyond gender, though she noted that the woman shared somewhat similar biology with Scaly in the form of tri-digit hands.

Scaly followed Shepard's gaze back toward the ship to see what had caught her attention, and called out to the duo carefully making their way out of the airlock.

 _"Tali! Are you all right?"_

 _"Ugh, it feels like I got flattened by a couple of charging Krogan, but I'll-"_ The woman clipped her own sentence short when she noticed the scene a couple of meters in front of her, tilting her head to the left in an attempt to look around Liara. _"What is that thing doing?"_

 _"Best guess? It's scanning the omni-tool for something."_

Miss Curves (probably sexist to refer to someone in such a manner, but the nickname 'Vacuum Suit Girl' was just slightly too much of a mouthful, in the Warlock's opinion.) raised her left arm up in an identical manner to Blue Girl when she brought up the glowing gadget, though all the woman in purple got was a broken, flat image of garbled static wreathing her arm.

" _Oh, Bosh'tet. Uh, sorry, but I need to borrow your omni-tool for a second."_

The woman turned and took her helpers left arm off of its position on at her waist and, bringing up the orange contraption, began hurriedly tapping her fingers across the device's translucent surface. " _What are you looking for, little bot…"_ The woman suddenly halted whatever action she was attempting to perform via the apparatus and called out to Scaly as she beckoned him to come and look at whatever it was that she had discovered. The towering and armored alien seemed reluctant to leave Blue Girl's side, but she reassured him with a confident nod.

Shepard brought her attention back to Joker when he apparently found what he had been looking for and phased back into her armor.

"Well?" She questioned.

"That device is connected to a massive database onboard their ship. I managed to pull everything I could find on every language and subdialect I could detect, so all I need to do is get some translation algorithms going while I jury rig some kind of system that allows you to speak words in English that they'll hear in their native language."

Shepard blinked. "You can do that?"

"Fuck if I know, but we're about to find out."

While Joker began whirring and humming as he started on his little intergalactic interaction project, Shepard couldn't help but notice that Miss Curves was getting increasingly animated as she conversed with Scaly.

 _"What did you find, Tali?"_

 _"That…thing was digging around in our database through Liara's omni-tool, just bypassed all of the security measures like they were nothing. It accessed and downloaded every language of every known race, and made copies of complete cultural and historical records of every known race as well."_

 _"That's…quite efficient."_

 _"_ Too _efficient. It grabbed all of that information, what amounted to several petabytes of data, after breezing through our firewalls, all in the span of a minute, tops. Captain, I…I think it might be some kind of A.I."_

Whatever the woman in the vacuum suit had stated seemed to have a significant impact on almost everyone present, the reactions of the newcomers including tensed muscles, furrowed brows, and a confirmation of Shepard's earlier suspicion of Scaly being in charge as many of the aliens looked to him, likely awaiting some kind of order.

The only exception to this turn of events was Lizard Man, who appeared to be entirely unfazed by the whole affair, his body language suggesting he was actually more relaxed now than when the Warlock had initially made contact, his somewhat slouched posture (to be fair, his anatomy made it look like he was always slouching, but no matter) and his shotgun now dangling in one hand giving him an air of near-boredom.

Scaly himself had no reaction aside from his mandibles twitching, making him seem unperturbed, though that was mostly due to Shepard's inability to read him. Damn him and his scale covered face. He must be unbeatable at poker.

 _"There are too many unknowns here, Tali. The technology they employ could simply be superior to ours, or they might keep shackles on their A.I., if it is one. Besides, with the language barrier, it's not like we can wave a gun in her face and demand answers."_

Miss Curves became more visibly agitated. _"I understand that, Captain! I simply warning you, we should be extremely cautious here."_

While Scaly gave the woman a nod, his allies didn't seem quite as satisfied, their growing unease beginning to manifest itself with nervous shuffling and tense whispering that steadily started to gain in volume. Despite attempts to be subtle, Shepard failed to miss some of the aliens begin to take defensive postures.

"Are you sure that all you did was download some languages? Cause they seem pretty pissed off about something." She questioned her Ghost.

"Well, I had to squeeze past a few minor firewalls, and I snagged some historical tidbits about their different cultures, but that's all."

Shepard narrowed her eyes. "If their database was in a language we don't understand, how were you able to tell what listed their cultural histories?"

"I looked at the pictures." Joker stated matter-of-factually.

Looks like Scaly didn't care much for his crew getting overly antsy, if the loudness of his voice and his gesturing arms were anything to go by. _"Everyone, calm down! If the unknown alien wanted to attack she would've done so by now. Our situation is already tenuous, we can't risk making it worse by alienating this new race over a culture difference."_

Another one of Scaly's kind decided to throw in his two cents on whatever it was they were so excitedly discussing. _"All due respect, Captain, but that A.I. might've acquired the data on our languages as a ruse in order to probe our system for weaknesses, and if it punched through our security as quickly as Tali claimed…"_

 _"Not to mention that, assuming she was alone out here, she could be stalling for reinforcements."_

"Joker, you must've crossed some kind of line, because they are getting very excited, and not in a happy fun way." Shepard was liking this less and less. She didn't know what in the hell her Ghost did to so deeply offend these people, but this situation was deteriorating much too quickly for her liking, if the increasingly heated argument between those present was anything to go by.

"Stop talking to me, I'm concentrating really hard right now. Just look as friendly as possible until I get this shit put together."

Shepard's face scrunched up as she raised her arms in frustrations "'Look friendly'? What does that even mean?"

"Stop talking to me! I'm concatenating a ridiculous amount of documents filled with foreign words and symbols that I'm trying separate based on multiple languages while simultaneously translating all of it with not nearly enough context to help me, so kindly shut your face!"

Shepard gritted her teeth in mounting frustration, but she conceded that distracting Joker during his task wasn't going to help much.

 _"I understand your desire to avoid confrontation here, Captain, but a breach in our security like that ought to be treated as a potential threat."_ Whatever Scaly number 2 stated was accompanied by a pair of rapid hand motions that had several of the aliens present slowly and deliberately begin circling Shepard, hands on the guns housed within their holsters or attached to their backs, but not yet drawn. The Warlock had to kill her instinct to make a grab for her own weapon as she carefully started to back up.

Guess Scaly 1 didn't care much for his people's actions. _"All of you, hold your positions! Last time I checked, I'm still captain, and I order you to take no hostile action against the alien unless she takes an_ overt _hostile action against you. Understood?"_

"Joker, you'd better get that damn translation rig working, cause if this goes on any longer, we may have to-" Shepard cut herself off when she noticed that the attempted aggressors were all wearing shocked expressions, arms slack at their sides. Shepard looked back to Blue Girl to see her face mirroring her allies. No way… "Can you understand me?" Shepard asked, guarded but hopeful.

Jaw still ajar, Blue Girl answered her with a silent nod.

To which Shepard responded by flinging both arms into the air and shouting "YES!", An action that caused many present to flinch in surprise. "Holy shit, thank you Joker, I thought I was gonna have to start playing life and death charades there for a minute." Shepard whipped around and waved several times to signal her team, remembering that the Hive cretins were likely still hosting their sing-a-long over the comms. When it looked like Blue Girl was about to say something, Shepard recalled why she had attempted contact to begin with, and quickly cut her off. "Look, I know that this is first contact, and it's supposed to be all formal and ceremonious, but we really don't have time for that."

Scaly briskly stepped in Shepard's direction. "What mean you?" he asked.

The Warlock opened her mouth to respond, then kept it open as she cocked her head in confusion as the words registered. "Still trying to iron out syntax," Joker informed her. "Don't worry about it, it's fine. Just try not to use really big words."

Shepard shook her head in an attempt to clear it, then refocused her attention on Scaly's pale eyes set deep into his skull. "The Hive. They're the ones who shot you down, they're on their way here, and they're _not_ a happy bunch." Shepard raised her arm, palm up, in a silent command to have her Ghost materialize there. "Joker, show them."

"Show them…?" Joker confusedly hedged.

"The video." She clarified, rolling her free hand to emphasize her point. "The Hive footage."

"Oh, right! Shit, uh, hang on." Various whirring noises emanated from the Ghost as he hastily attempted to finish the compiled videos he had abandoned earlier. What their new friends ended up viewing was a jumbled up mess of footage showing hordes of long clawed, razor teethed, screeching abominations, rushing forward in a disorganized onslaught, and massive, almost Krogan sized bipedal monsters, sheathed in what appeared to be natural armor, wielding a strange mix of ancient stone blades, and explosive cannons.

"Certainly they don't look happy." Scaly admitted, his face betraying no significant reaction, an exact opposite to Blue Girl's response to what she was seeing. "Do what we?" Scaly addressed Shepard.

The Warlock only hesitated a moment before responding. "You can't fight them in the open like this, they'll tear you apart. You don't want to fight them inside your ship either, the tight spaces would be even worse." Shepard turned about and pointed, quickly finding what she was looking for. "Your best bet would be that large shipwreck. Post your people up inside it, they'll have good cover from any return fire, and you can catch them out in the open when they make their attack."

Blue Girl took a step forward and motioned to their much more recent shipwreck. "We have wounded inside." She informed Shepard.

"Then seal it up. With all of us out here, the Hive will leave a locked door alone." Shepard almost turned to make her way to their chosen point of defense when she saw the look of apprehension on Blue Girl's face. Sighing, Shepard tried to put some gentleness in her voice. "Look, I don't expect us to become best friends after a few minutes, but you're going to have to trust me when I say that I am here to help you. Just follow my lead, and I'll do all I can to make sure everybody makes it out of this alive."

While her nervous demeanor hadn't diminished, the woman nodded in understanding. She was clearly not accustomed to this sort of thing, her constant fidgeting and subtly trembling hands betraying her lack of combat experience. Or maybe she wasn't used to crashing onto an unknown planet, getting thrust into a fight for her life, with seemingly no help from whoever it was who sent them here.

Scaly had already started barking orders, his words now blessedly coherent to her, getting any able-bodied people from still inside the ship to aid in the fight, bolting down the only current access point to their ship, and forming his people up to move out. Shepard once again attempted to make her way to the rusted ruin when something stopped her a second time. "Can I ask your name?" she asked the woman. "I'm really tired of calling you Blue Girl in my head."

The woman froze in her tracks, let loose a single laugh, almost like a release of tension, and responded. "My name is Liara T'soni."

"Liara." Shepard tested the name out on her tongue, and thought it sounded quite nice. "I like it. I'm Shepard."

"Just Shepard?" Liara questioned.

"Well, my full name is-" the red-headed Guardian's response was cut short when what appeared to be wisps of smoke began curling off of her body. Liara's reaction was pure confusion, while Shepard fell back on her usual response to this kind of development. "Fuck everything."

[][][][][][][]

Liara was fairly certain whatever translator Shepard was using didn't quite decipher the meaning of that word into something she could comprehend, though she could guess what the word was functioning as in her sentence. What Liara could not figure out was why Shepard had used the expletive, or why steam was apparently rising off of her all of a sudden. At least one question was answered when the same roiling black clouds that had heralded the arrival of those "Hive" ships materialized.

Right on top of the rusted out wreck they had intended to use to their advantage.

"Spread out!" Garrus shouted. "Find cover wherever you can!"

"No!" Shepard countered, keeping her eyes fixed on the now half-formed vessel and waving her arms in a 'come here' gesture. "Everyone, group up on me!"

The present crew looked visibly conflicted, their gaze rapidly shifting between the woman in purple robes and their captain. Shepard must've been able to perceive the crew's lack of response, given the fact that nobody had made their way to her. She turned to face them and almost pleaded more than ordered. "You have to trust me, I know what to do!"

Garrus was clearly torn about this situation, but he knew any hesitation could mean potential lives lost. "Do as she says." He ordered, already starting to run toward Shepard.

Liara, thankfully, didn't have to move far to stand next to Shepard. The Hive ship was now fully formed, the dark mist having nearly disappeared. Everyone looked on with baited breath, but the ship didn't move, fire, or do anything. Suddenly, thin streams of light shot out from the belly of the vessel, traveling straight down to the roof of the shipwreck, from which coalesced one of the hulking brutes they had seen in the Ghost's video. The being swung a weighted sword over its head, and let out a battle cry that was something of a cross between a roar and a screech. Liara didn't have time to ponder the ramifications of short range teleportation when the Hive ship fired off the purple spheres that could track targets without lock-on.

"What are you going to do?" Liara did her best to keep her voice from trembling too much. The others, now crowding around the fire-haired woman, all turned toward her, also very curious as to what she had planned.

"Nothing." She admitted, then clarified before her present audience became irate. "Look." She pointed toward the Hive ship, the sword-wielding warrior, and the lavender death approaching them. At first, Liara couldn't determine what Shepard wanted them to see, but then she caught it, two streaks coming in behind the wreck, and moving fast in their direction. Liara had a moment of déjà vu when she realized that she was witnessing the same thing she had seen just before she had first met Shepard.

The twin objects dipped out of sight just as Liara noticed them, the mass of the beached ship concealing them from view, until they reappeared cresting the wreck. The objects, now identified as a pair of speeders with one occupant each, apparently found an incline and sufficient speed to launch themselves into the air. The speeder on the left used its twin prongs to catch the armored creature around the neck, slamming it forward into a 10 meter drop to the cold ground. The hoverbike on the right began tilting backward when its driver appeared to yank on the handles. What happened next was partially obscured by the now upright vehicle, save for the rocket that blazed a path to the Hive ship, its ear-popping impact wreathing the bow of the vessel in a bright halo of fire.

Liara was certain there would have been more rousing celebration at this surprise turnaround had it not been for the burning balls of doom still ponderously making their way toward them. The first speeder bike hit the snow-dusted dirt hard, its double prongs catching the ground in such a way so that it caused the frame to lurch forward, bucking the driver off of his seat and tossing him into a front flip, a move that was accentuated by a loud _bang_ as the former driver fired off a shotgun just past the crest of his somersault. The round from the shotgun had the double effect of ripping through the sword wielding beast's head, and adding even more momentum to the stranger's leap, propelling him in the direction of the tightly packed group.

The figure hit the ground at a dead sprint, moving at an impressive clip considering the amount of gear and armor he had strapped to him, before sliding to a halt just in front of the _Digeris'_ crew gathered around Shepard, a move Liara found to be a bit too flashy to be entirely necessary. The newcomer raised his arms to shoulder level in opposing directions, palms outward in a 'stop' gesture, which had Liara initially puzzled, until her silent question was answered, at which point she became even more perplexed.

She'd pore over the footage later, which would reveal a small bubble of faint, lavender light, beginning at the man's core, expanding outward in a fraction of a second till it formed a half sphere of sufficient size to cover everyone present. Still in the dark about how in the hell he managed to do that, the reason for the large glowing dome became apparent when the projectiles still homing in on them began to close the gap with the luminescent half sphere.

Liara couldn't help but cringe and instinctively bring her arm up in an attempt to shield herself when the projectiles made contact with the barrier, the connection producing a brilliant display of light and purplish fire as the spheres ruptured and spread across the barrier's surface.

But the explosion had no effect on those currently occupying the barrier. Not even a breeze could be felt from the blast, despite its uncomfortable proximity.

 _Now_ people started cheering, exceedingly grateful to the newcomer for his quick action, and now raring for the fight to defend themselves against these needlessly aggressive beings. The individual who had launched the missile at the Hive ship had dismounted his now curiously absent speeder, and was standing in the shadow of the ancient wreck. He turned his both hooded and helmeted head left and right, then shouted something she couldn't understand, though she did catch the name of the robed woman.

" _Whatever you're gonna do with our new best friends, Shepard, I suggest you do it fast. No telling when more baddies are gonna show up"_

Shepard looked back at Captain Vakarian. "You should get your people in motion." She advised him, not bothering to wait for a reply as she swiftly made her way to the wreck, now armed with some kind of stubby looking rifle, her heavily armored ally dashing alongside her.

All present crewmembers looked to Garrus. "The hell are you staring at me for?" he demanded. "Go!" The sound of armored boots hammering into snow and dirt mixed with the clanking of jostled equipment and weapons filled the air as Liara and the crew ran after Shepard.

Damaged, but not out of commission just yet, the enemy ship reversed so that the wreck acted as cover from any additional rockets. While she couldn't see much of what was happening on the far side of the derelict, the narrow beams of pale light streaming from the underside of the Hive ship hinted that they would have company very soon.

Their group barely made it halfway to the derelict when the hooded stranger started frantically waving his arms and yelling in his indiscernible language, which caused Shepard to whip around and bring her gaze to somewhere above and behind them. "Run faster!" she shouted, her helmet rapidly rematerializing around her head. "We've got more Tomb ships dropping right behind you!"

Liara didn't even bother trying to turn around, knowing they had no time to waste. Wrex was the first of their group to reach the intended destination, the hulking Krogan hurling his immense bulk into the air so that the railing of the tilted ship was gut high, and tossing himself over and on to the wreckage. A few at a time, the rest of the crew began to follow the Battlemaster's example as they made it to the wreck, with Liara being one of the last, the archaeologist lacking the athleticism of the more active and experienced crew. Their new trio of allies began walking forward in a slow, deliberate manner in between the last few crewmembers as the Asari passed them, the sporadic _pop pop pop_ of their weapons firing encouraging her to pump her legs harder.

Finally reaching the wreck herself, she noticed most of the crew already taking up defensive positions wherever cover could be found. Wrex had yet to move from where he had originally boarded, his armor-clad hand outstretched to Liara as it had been for many of the others. Liara steeled herself as she closed the gap, and leaped forward, planting her foot onto the ship's port side, and slapping her hand into the Krogan's waiting grasp.

Liara was in the process of thanking Wrex when a burst of light slammed into him, sending both of them to the floor.

Dazed, vision blurred, her hearing reduced to a sharp ringing, Liara struggled to get back on her feet from what she could only assume was some kind of explosive shot. Strong hands found her and yanked her back up. Wrex, who apparently managed to recover far more quickly than her, seemed to be shouting something, possibly asking if she was all right, though Liara couldn't tell for sure. Her head still reeling from the force of the shot's impact, Liara could only nod and hope that was the correct response, which appeared to be the case as the Krogan let her go and retook his position at the railing. Knowing she ought to do the same, Liara tried her best to fight off the shock that was causing her limbs to feel sluggish and line up with the others, drawing her pistol as she did so.

Finally witnessing what they were up against, Liara experienced the most uncomfortable sensation of her heart trying to rip its way out of her throat and her stomach sinking down to her feet.

There were so many of them, practically a sea of hideous beings that bore a frightening resemblance to reanimated corpses, too long teeth and hook-like claws bared, desperate to sink into flesh.

And the sound, loud enough to almost drown out the weapons fire coming from her left and right. Despite still being shell shocked, she thought she could hear them, an unnatural wail that pierced her head and chilled her bones.

Behind the pack of ravenous creatures, several of the larger, armored Hive stood waiting, some with swords, others taking potshots with heavy cannons that appeared to be mounted on their arms. Most of their shots missed, considering the distance between them and the wreck, but the few that did rocked the already broken vessel.

As an archaeologist, Liara would often study species and races most would consider unusual, or even disgusting, but she would always try to keep an open mind regarding them.

But these things, these monsters, were so twisted and dark, there was just something so irrevocably _wrong_ about them.

The Asari shook her head and took aim, making sure that her crosshairs didn't stray too close to the three strangers still holding their ground in the open despite the furious onslaught approaching. Her reticle found one of the seemingly countless creatures, and she tried to keep her hands from shaking too much as she pulled the trigger. Through the chaos of small arms fire perforating the air, she saw her first shot smack into the shoulder of a creature running adjacent to the one she had been aiming for, which only caused it to flinch as it continued to charge forward. Liara quickly lined up her pistol again and snapped off another shot. She couldn't even tell where that one landed.

Liara forced herself to breathe in and out, wracking her brain for any helpful information her instructor told her however many years ago.

 _Arms steady. Focus in on the target. Smooth trigger pull straight back, don't let your sights waver even a little._

Liara followed her own advice as she tracked a particular Hive monster, subconsciously noticing how the area between its upper and lower jaw seemed pushed back on one side, likely an old bullet wound. She let out a measured breath as her finger carefully squeezed the trigger. This time, the round collided with her target's face, which had the unexpected result of causing its entire body to erupt in a small burst of flame, before vanishing to dust. She tried to not let this distract her as she dropped another one of them, her successive shots becoming increasingly more inaccurate, but still managed to remain effective. One round caught its target in the chest, staggering it, while another connected with the knee joint of a Hive, sending it tumbling to the ground to be trampled to death by its own allies.

The archaeologist almost wanted to cheer at this turn of events till she realized just how many of the monstrosities remained. Even with so much of the crew contributing their available firepower, there were far too many of them remaining for the Asari's liking, and they were rapidly closing the distance between them. Equally as concerning was the fact that their new friends had still not moved to the relative safety of the wreck, the trio standing shoulder to shoulder as they continuously fired and reloaded and fired some more. Liara decided to try and give them at least a little extra time by utilizing something she was more familiar with than a gun.

She took in a deep breath, focusing on her center as she concentrated the power within to heed her call. She pushed the building energy into her left arm, causing it to become wreathed in chaotic blue light before throwing her hand forward in a pushing motion. A blast of biotic energy erupted from her open palm and flashed through the air to send the lead Hive creatures reeling back.

For a fraction of a second, the Biotic Push seemed to achieve the intended effect, until the bright projectile detonated around the Hive, their wiry, almost frail looking bodies disintegrating from her attack, leaving not so much as a pile of ash as evidence of them ever existing.

This turn of events left Liara so stunned she momentarily forgot about the encroaching horde. She had always been adept at biotics, but the ability to completely vaporize multiple hostiles with a flick of one's hand was not easily attained. Spurred on by this turn of events, those among the crew who also possessed biotic capabilities took the liberty of unleashing them upon the horde, and, in a similar fashion to Liara's attempt, found them to be almost shockingly effective.

The Asari's sudden surge in destructive capability had a similar effect on Shepard and her friends, the three of them all turning to gawk at the woman. At least, she assumed that's what they were doing, their helmeted faces offering no aid in deciphering their reaction. Using this opportunity, she made an exaggerated hand motion to encourage them to retreat to the derelict, which they responded to by immediately turning back around and resuming their bullet dissemination amongst the charging enemy.

Well, she tried.

To her right, Liara could just catch one of her Asari crewmates loudly conversing with Captain Vakarian.

"What in the Goddess' name are they doing? Didn't she say you can't fight these things in the open?"

At first Liara thought she wasn't able to hear the Turian's reply, until an exceptionally loud _crack_ sounded over the din of controlled automatic fire, a mass accelerator rifle launching a shaped projectile so hard, it punched through a whole line of the unsettling creatures. Then she heard Garrus speak.

"I get the feeling she was referring to us, specifically. They may have their own way of dealing with Corpse Riot, here."

Liara returned to her attempts at providing support with her sidearm, though her accuracy suffered now that she was trying to keep one eye on their new friends, partly to make sure they would remain safe, and partly to see what they would do. Despite their solution being quite effective, Liara could admit to herself that she was a little disappointed it wasn't more…dramatic.

As the Hive drew closer, the trio quickly split apart, the heavily armored one sprinting to the left as he threw some hastily fired shots from an automatic rifle she hadn't realized he possessed. The hooded stranger dashed in the opposite direction, quickly but deliberately firing off round after round from his bulky opted to stay put rather than follow one of her companions, though she did begin to slowly edge backwards as the Hive closed to within meters.

While the Asari never would have thought of a plan like this herself, she could already see how well it was working. The three of them splitting up like that caused the mass of Hive to break apart as well, two veins shooting out from the main horde to chase down the duo running off in opposing directions, while the remainder of the mob maintained their initial course toward the wreck, yet even they became further divided with a number of them focusing on the woman ahead of them, making the horde as a whole seem much more manageable.

Alarmed shouting, loud enough to be noticeable over the cacophony of sounds pervading the area, drew Liara's attention behind her. A number of crewmates had taken up positions on the starboard side of the ship in order to stem the tide of attackers originating from the damaged Hive vessel. Valiant though their efforts might be, their increasingly frenzied yelling denoted the fact that those things were close to breaching their cover atop the wreck. There was only a second of hesitation before Liara left her crewmembers on the port side to deal with the incoming assault to help make sure that they didn't get blindsided by this secondary attack.

She had only managed to get halfway to her destination when a cannon shot slammed into the empty space between an Asari and a Salarian, forcing both of them to stumble away. In the wake of the blast, a hulking titan of a biped emerged, apparently having jumped the distance from ground to ship. The archaeologist recognized this monstrosity from the recording she had been shown, though seeing one up close was even more unpleasant than through the eyes of some machine. A sickly brown, gnarled outer shell that looked almost like chitin, with three eyes glowing a faint green, a twisted looking stone sword in its right hand.

Despite lacking an oral cavity, the being roared, whether in challenge, or perceived triumph, Liara couldn't say. She was quick to act, forsaking her sidearm for fear that it would be of little use against the massive opponent, again utilizing her biotic prowess in the hope that it would have a similar effect in this instance. This time, the concussive bolt of force she released did little more than stagger the thing, before it continued its now angered advance toward her. Steeling herself, Liara gritted her teeth and drew even deeper into her reserves of energy, summoning an orb of light directly in front of the beast, the sphere growing in size and strength till it resembled a miniature black hole. While nowhere near as powerful as its much larger counterpart, the biotic singularity was more than enough to handle most enemies.

How tragic for her that this was no ordinary foe, for while it did pull at the Hive monster and force it to slog forward, it failed to even lift the thing off the ground. The singularity did have the strange effect of causing steam to rise off of its insect-like skin, as if it was being burned.

This was _not_ how biotics were supposed to work.

Faced with no other option, Liara took aim and fired round after mass accelerated round at the behemoth, becoming increasingly dismayed as she watched the projectiles merely chip away at the creature's natural armor, the being barely even flinching. She might have shouted something, a warning, or a plea for help, she can't recall. Before she could do anything else, the beast caught her off guard by lunging with unbelievable speed, somehow mustering enough strength to overcome the singularity's pull, swinging in an upward arc with it's heavy looking blade. The force of the blow caught her square in the gut, knocking her off of her feet, and sending her hurtling into the port side railing, the backs of her thighs slamming into the rusted metal on account of the ship's slight lean toward that side, before finally hitting the cold, hard dirt below.

Galaxies danced before her eyes as Liara tried with what strength she had to rise from the flat-on-her-back position she had so rudely been placed into. Amazingly, the sheer power of the strike that had sent her overboard was just enough to trigger the barrier normally meant to stop high-speed projectiles, meaning she was alive, though in a significant amount of pain. She could vaguely hear voices shouting this or that, but for all she knew, she could be the one yelling. It took what seemed like years just to get her elbows underneath her battered form.

The living corpse that attacked her was kind enough to wait at least that long.

It practically threw itself at the Asari, shrieking, thrashing, and flinging its wickedly sharp claws around with wild abandon. Liara desperately thrust her left hand into the thing's chest to try and keep it at bay while her right furiously searched for a gun that wasn't there anymore. Panic overtook logic as she tried to grapple with the monstrosity, snagging a wrist in each hand to keep it from ripping her face off of her skull, which left the rotted, festering maw of the beast to make an awful _clamp clamp_ sound as it opened and closed centimeters from her face, so eager to consume, to destroy.

Thank the Goddess, she didn't have to stare long into that gaping pit of death she feared she would soon enter, piece by fleshy piece. Instead, the creature seemed to catch fire for just moment, before dissolving into ash that rained over her, coating her jumpsuit, and clogging her mouth, nose and eyes. She would have thanked whoever it was who just saved her life had she not been so concerned with trying to get corpse dust out of her orifices. Too late, she _did_ notice the soft _thunk_ that sounded just to her left. Blinded as she was by ash, she managed to clear her vision enough to see what else was about to try and kill her.

Some kind of pyramid-shaped device, steadily glowing brighter and brighter at the top.

Due to previous events, it took Liara far too long to realize that this object was an explosive.

Having thus discerned what the device was meant to do, she could only bring her arms up in a futile attempt to ward off the fiery death that never came. A blur a purple shot into her field of view, stopping only just long enough for her to see that the robed woman, Shepard, had flung herself onto the grenade right as it detonated, hurling her body back toward the ruined ship.

Liara barely noticed the purple bolts of light flying over and around her as she hurriedly made her way to Shepard, omni-tool at the ready to administer healing gel. Carefully turning her over so that she was face-up, Liara's heart sank. Her once brilliant purple and gold robe was a smoking, charred mess from the front, the visor of her helmet shattered, revealing a severely burned and lacerated face. The Asari fought to keep her arm steady as her omni-tool took readings to try and assess the damage and determine how much gel she might need. It was all for naught.

Shepard was already dead.

[][][][][][][]

 _Dying sucks._ Shepard mused to herself.

Every time, no matter how it happened, it was just the worst thing that could happen, and it did happen, more often than the Warlock would care to recall.

The deafening silence, the infinite black like a sludge that seemed to cover her eyes and made it impossible to move, she never would get used to it. Though she couldn't see or hear anything, she knew her squadmates were hard at work trying to fend off the second wave of Hive alongside their newfound buddies. Normally, this was around the time when Joker would get off his non-existent ass and get her back in the fight, but with the Dark suffusing the area, it was all he could do to keep her Light from fading into the nothingness that currently enveloped all of her senses.

While the Light of another Guardian melding with her own was usually the next best thing, the last thing she recalled was Bastion and Tiil getting isolated and swarmed from all sides, so that plan was out.

 _Lucky me, I get a third option._ Shepard thought, feeling a grin she knew wouldn't reach the corpse lying in the snow and dirt.

She concentrated all her power to a central point, somewhere in the dark, that coalesced into little more than the flickering flame of a candle. The Warlock steeled herself, knowing that it would be painful, but she pressed on, feeding that little spark of Light, focusing till it grew in intensity and heat to that of a bonfire, just beginning to roar and jump. The pain hit her, searing her, as if she stood amidst that bonfire, but rather than shy away, she drank in the flames, let them blanket her, offering herself as fuel to bring the flames even higher.

 _I am only a vessel_ she chanted. _Through me, the Traveler's enemies are consumed in fire_.

The bonfire ripped through the dark, a blistering column of white-hot flame that grew taller and wider till that simple candle had become an unstoppable inferno, with Shepard at the epicenter.

She'd gone for some time without dying. She'd make sure to make those bastards pay for ending her streak.

When she came back, she was floating, yellow fire dancing over her robes and flitting through her vision. From her now elevated position, she could clearly see the Hive as they made their final assault, the mass of acolytes, armed with rudimentary energy weapons, and the Knights, bellowing their challenges at her.

 _Sheep to the slaughter_.

She held out her left hand, a stream of pure solar fury pouring out from it, incinerating the Hive too close, while igniting those further away. Those untouched by her wrath were cowed by this display of power, their formation splintering as they broke ranks to try and find cover. Anticipating this response, Shepard performed a quick hand motion that materialized her favorite firearm, Corrective Measure, right into her waiting grasp. The repeated _rat-tat-tat-tat_ of the belt fed weapon was like sweet music as it tore through any Hive unlucky enough to still be in the open, and forced any remaining to choose between retreat, or death by pissed-off Guardian.

Shepard's sudden reanimation had the secondary effect of freeing up her fellow Guardians from their respective predicaments, Tiil with his deadly dance as he tried to keep the attention of several Hive Knights off of their new friends, and Bastion, who had heretofore been buried under a small hill of thrall, something he commonly referred to as 'a damn good time'.

Hey, when it came to sexual preference, she tried not to judge.

With the bulk of the Hive force now either running scared or reduced to dust, the Warlock less than gracefully plopped back onto the ground, to be greeted by a both shocked and blue face.

Liara. Her name was Liara.

"You died." She said, whether a question, statement, or accusation, Shepard couldn't say.

"Yeah." Was the rasped reply, her throat seeming to lose all moisture whenever she revived in that manner. "I came back."

There was no response to this, though the look on Liara's face suggested that there would be no small amount of questions regarding this.

But that could wait for now. Most if not all of their questions would be answered as soon as they got them all to the relative safety of the City. She needed to make sure her team was still in one piece, and, speaking of which...

"Y'know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were just trying to show off for the crowd." Tiil jibed as he sauntered over to where she kneeled on the ground.

"Hey, I won't pass up a chance to showboat, 'specially for people who've never seen Guardians before." Her response came in between heavy panting, such was the effect of having channeled so much power so quickly.

"Isn't that ironic?" Bastion said, dusting off the ashes from his various plates of armor. "The one guy who loves to work a crowd more than anybody I know doesn't get to show off at all."

Tiil raised a finger before thrusting it in the EXO's direction. "Aha!, but you're wrong! Or, did you miss that sick Sparrow backflip into a one-handed rocket shot that messed up that tomb ship?"

"Need to get your eyes checked there, bud. They were clearly looking at me and my amazing shotgun-propelled frontflip before I saved their asses."

"I betcha they're looking at you now." Tiil shot back. "You've got thrall teeth and claws stuck all over your helmet."

"Oh, for fu-" Bastion cut himself off as he removed his helm, always conscious of trying to keep his armor neat and clean whenever he could.

"Synthetic!" One of the newcomers shouted, a cry that caused several firearms to be snapped up and aimed at the now perplexed EXO. Instinctively, the other two Guardians brought their own weapons to bear upon the crew of the downed vessel.

"What the hell!?" Shepard exclaimed angrily.

 **Well, here we are again.**

 **I'm not sure an apology would suffice, given just how unnecessary this massive break was. I do feel it important to inform you that I'm currently in a psych ward, so while I may be writing more, given the amount of free time, I can't promise a proper update schedule.**

 **I DO appreciate everyone who has reviewed, followed, favorited, and those who even favorited and followed me, as an 'author'. Your kindness knows no bounds, and it makes me feel like that much more of an asshole for not putting more effort into this before.**

 **At any rate, I don't know what to say about this chapter. I was so confident going in that the action would be the easy part of this story, when it turned out to be the most difficult by far. I felt like I could have gone into greater depth with some parts, and I'll probably come back to this chapter, but for now, I hope my meager efforts will suffice.**

 **Finally, I did take your constructively critical reviews to heart, and I intend to go back and rewrite some of the earlier chapters to make the appropriate changes to certain events.**

 **Till next time.**


	6. Who Can Replace a God

The Darkness was stirring.

What strange happenings, what wondrously curious events that had come to their little corner of the galaxy. The quaint explorers, so eager were they to discover new beings, new civilizations, to 'make history'. They most certainly accomplished this, if being attacked so many times within so short a period of time counted as such. In every confrontation, the new arrivals to the solar system were forced to rely on the aid of the Guardians to save them from destruction.

Such weak, pathetic cretins, these unknown visitors, and the Guardians, all of them. They would drown in the Dark soon enough.

But now was not the time for such ruminations, for there was work to be done, information to be gathered.

There were some among the Light-bearers who mistakenly believed that the Darkness was some vague, nebulous force that opposed them, when, in fact, the Dark could be likened to the opposite of the Traveler. Where the foolish, oversized ball would travel from planet to planet offering Light and goodwill for all, the Darkness would tear through the void, unleashing madness and death. Not some unquantifiable force, the all-consuming shadow was a cosmic entity, a primordial being of impossible power and strength.

In the eyes of such terrible might, he was merely a pawn, but even a pawn can obtain greater power.

The wisps of his mind, invisible to the naked eye, slithered and twisted its way into the crashed vessel, even as the fools to whom the ship belonged turned on their saviors. How utterly delightful, that was. The tendrils of his dark thoughts curled, unseen, as they found their way through the dimly lit rooms and corridors, the cries and wails of the injured and hopefully dying a wondrous symphony. The splinter of consciousness located a mind untouched by the Light, feeble and vulnerable to his suggestion, and caused the alien to move toward a nearby terminal.

Oryx was quite interested in learning about these newcomers, the better to crush them later.

Information flitted across the screen at a rapid pace, element zero, biotics, the Genophage, the Krogan, the Asari, all very fascinating, illuminating.

That last one especially intrigued the Taken King, a race that appeared to be touched by the Light, but not the Light of the Traveler. It would behoove him to have one or more members of the mono-gender race captured, the better to study th-.

Oh.

 _Oh._

Now _this_ was an interesting bit of information, the tendrils of his mind slipping away from the being they had borrowed in sinister glee. Before the screen of the terminal became blank, two words could be found at the top.

 _Ardat-Yakshi._

[][][][][][][]

"Stand down, that's an order!" Garrus all but shouted at those among the crew who had so hastily targeted the artificial humanoid.

It had been a rather trying period of time for the new captain. Shot at and chased down by those he had hoped to make contact with, knocked out of the sky by a collision with another aggressive ship, attacked by creatures that looked like they had just spent the last couple of days in a shallow grave, and now this. Had that all happened in one day? It was almost too much for the Turian to handle.

Thankfully, at least some of the crew had the sense to keep their weapons holstered and listen to him, a few of them even attempting to convince their more hostile friends to obey the order. One by one, they began to lower and holster their firearms, till only the Quarian remained.

Of course, Tali was the one who had shouted 'synthetic' out for all to hear, her shotgun immediately in her hands and aimed at the armored stranger. For being the kind, helpful engineer she appeared to be, that girl had a vengeful streak, particularly when it came to A.I. of any sort.

Despite having their own guns out and pointed at his crew, the mysterious allies endeavored to do their part in defusing the situation. "I don't know what your problem is, lady." The robed one, Shepard, started. "But Bastion is not a bad guy."

The one with the helm and hood shrugged while still lining up his pistol with both hands. "He does have his moments of unbridled rage..."

The EXO in question offered his own thoughtful commentary to the tense conversation. "Hey!" He exclaimed.

Shepard gave the Hunter a hard look, her helmet nowhere to be found. "He's _not_ a bad guy."

Garrus decided to take matters into his own hands, stepping towards the agitated Quarian and placing one talon-tipped hand in a firm grip onto her weapon. "Tali, try to think. Does he look like one of the Geth? Does he operate like one of the Geth?"

Captain Vakarian stared into the visor of her vacuum-sealed suit, a slight wavering of her gun her only response.

"What has he done to warrant aggression or even suspicion?" He demanded.

"It's not what he has done, Captain, it's what he could do! He's an A.I., they're al-" she started, but Garrus cut her off.

"Our rules don't apply here, Engineer Zorah. Until such time as when we have undeniable proof that this synthetic has ill intentions toward us, we're going to have to follow the lead of those who have repeatedly _saved our lives_."

The Quarian remained in her position, before reluctantly beginning to lower her firearm as the strangers followed suit, the still nameless one in the cape casually spinning his sidearm around his finger before depositing it to the holster on his thigh, as if nothing amiss had taken place.

The distinctive roar of engines grew steadily louder as three sleek, brightly colored spacecraft came into view, the swift fighters dipping low in order to deposit a humanoid each, hitting the ground in between the recent and ancient shipwrecks. These three newcomers, bedecked somewhat similarly to their rescuers, rushed forward with weapons drawn, boots pounding into the snow. Those among the crew who had just recently holstered their weapons were tense once more, unsure how to respond to this new event.

"Steady, everyone." Garrus ordered, the tone of his voice allowing for no argument.

The heavily armored one in the center spoke first, his weapon in hand, but not raised. " _We got Commander Zavala's warning about Hive in the area. Are you all okay?"_

Shepard had already started moving toward the stranger in the middle, her status as diplomat temporarily forgotten. "Yeah, late to the party again, old man." Shepard said, a small grin on her face.

They closed the gap to each other, their right hands clasped onto one another's forearms. _"You best watch it. I'm not so old that I can't kick your ass if I have to."_

Shepard took on a more serious demeanor. "Did we lose any?"

The shoulders of the stranger seemed to sag. _"One. Jester-85 got too fancy, Ketch blew his ship away."_

The Warlock put her hands on her hips and shook her head. "Damn bastard never could quit while he was ahead, huh?"

 _"Yeah, whether it was a party or a battle, he just_ had _to be the life of it. We'll be holding the farewell ceremony tomorrow night."_

The crew of the _Digeris_ were left to try and discern the conversation between the two whilst only being able to understand one of them. This, thankfully, did not last long before the armor-clad one put a finger up to where his ear would be behind his helmet, as if listening to a voice they could not hear.

"Is this working? Can you understand what I'm saying?" He questioned.

"Loud and clear." Garrus replied, appreciative of whatever it was that allowed them to communicate so easily. "I believe we have a number of introductions to make."

The man nodded and stepped forward. "Name's David Anderson." He said, offering out his hand in the same way he had with Shepard. Garrus made sure to not fumble what appeared to be their standard means of greeting, the Turian and the Titan holding the forearm of the other in a firm but brief grip. Anderson pointed behind him. "This here's Nyx-27 and Vaika Sarjeel." The two of them waving and bowing, respectively. "We're Fireteam Shining Maw."

"Captain Garrus Vakarian, at your service." The Turian replied before turning slightly towards his crew, then back to Anderson. "I'd introduce the whole crew to you, but that might take some time, and besides, history need only remember my name." He joked.

The hooded one who was with Shepard chuckled at that. "A captain with a sense of humor? I'd say some of our leaders could learn a thing or two from you." He stood up straight before placing an open palm over his chest and bowing. "I am your most humble servant, Tiil Vari." As he came out of his bow, his hood fell off of his de-materializing helm, revealing a face colored a soft blue, white marks of paint on his forehead, nose, cheeks, and chin. His eyes were the most startling thing about him, his irises the color of a brilliant sunset.

Said eyes contained no small amount of mischief when he added, "I'd introduce you to our good friend, Bastion-17, but it seems you've already met him."

The EXO decided to add his voice to the conversation. "This is all very exciting, first contact, whatever, but we still have the issue of _that_." He started, pointing to the _Digeris_. "I'm assuming you don't want to just leave your ship here for the Fallen to strip clean?"

"We definitely wouldn't mind it being moved somewhere more secure." Garrus agreed.

Anderson spoke up again. "We can get all our ships together, get some tow cables on it, should be able to haul it back to the City no problem."

"We're not putting it in the hangar." Shepard warned. "Holliday will have all of our asses if we try and make that thing fit alongside all the other craft coming in and out of the Tower."

"I'm certain we could find a warehouse, or some other kind of large building within the City to hole it up." Tiil offered.

"How do you intend to get that ship inside a warehouse?" Nyx-27 questioned. "There's no warehouse I know of with doors wide enough to fit it."

"Easy, we'll just cut out the roof." Tiil explained

"Cut out the roof." Nyx repeated the Hunter's words haltingly, in disbelief.

"Enough." Anderson exclaimed irritably. "We'll park any ships that don't need repairs out in front of the main plaza. It'll be tight, but we can manage. Any ships that _do_ need repairs can be moved to the rafters of the hangar, thanks to some modifications we made recently." The Titan paused for breath before continuing, "Finally, we should be able to fit their ship inside the hangar proper, where we can get right to work on repairs. Holliday will definitely not like it, but she'll just have to deal with it, so unless any of the Vanguards object, this'll be the plan we move forward with. Understood?"

"Yes, _Dad."_ Tiil jabbed.

Vaika grinned at that. "If he's the Dad, who's the Mom?" She asked.

"Shepard." Bastion-17 supplied without hesitation.

Laughing, Tiil spread his arms out in an attempt at a hug with the Warlock. "Mommy!" He cried.

Shepard's response was to reel back, arms up, palms outward, with fire swirling around her fingers. "I will incinerate you." She warned.

Tiil brought his hands up to his cheeks and mock-squealed before hiding behind Anderson, who brought an elbow back into the Hunter's gut with such force that he felt it through his armor.

"Enough horsin' around, let's get to it." He commanded.

They had to call in a third fireteam from the City, utilizing all nine Guardian ships to lift the beached wreck, cables with electromagnets secured to the _Digeris'_ hull as they hauled it to safety within the confines of the Wall. Because Guardian ships were designed with efficiency and minimized space in mind, the crew of the _Digeris_ had to remain inside the inoperable vessel. They had radioed ahead, the necessary alterations to the hangar having already taken place. The flight of Guardian fighters could only bring the _Digeris_ up to the entryway, the damaged and battered ship having received enough make-shift repairs to limp and sputter the rest of the distance into the Hangar itself, making good use of the still-functioning engines that Tali had electrified herself to repair.

There was a worrying moment where it appeared the once sleek vessel wouldn't fit, the engines only just clearing the drop off point right as the nose of the spacecraft touched the far wall. It would be tricky repairing the rear of the ship, but they would manage.

By the time Shepard and her fireteam touched down at the center plaza, the newcomers were filing out of the hangar, with Captain Garrus Vakarian at the head of the group. A number of the crew had to be rushed to the infirmary for injuries sustained both in the crash and the ensuing fight. Those who remained were greeted by the sight of more than fifty Guardians all filling up the plaza, with the Speaker standing in front of them all. Unsure of what else to do, the fireteams who had aided in bringing the aliens and their ship to the Tower shifted to stand amongst their fellow Guardians.

"Welcome, strangers from unknown and wondrous worlds." The Speaker began, his arms open in invitation. Joker had been thinking ahead, for a change, and so it didn't take long till every Ghost in the City was running the same translation algorithm "On behalf of Humanity, their mechanical brethren, the EXOs, and their trusted allies among the Awoken, I, the Speaker, greet you in humility. Through all generations from this point on, may our people be quick to aid, and slow to anger with one another."

Only a breath of silence ensued before Garrus spoke up. "On behalf of the Council, and all races associated with it, I, Captain Garrus Vakarian, greet you and your people in gratitude. Let there be naught but peace and goodwill between us, from now till the end of time."

Towering over the Speaker, Captain Vakarian extended his arm in the same manner as Anderson had with him, the masked man surprising Garrus by firmly gripping his hand instead, the Turian recovering quickly and returning the handshake.

The heretofore stoic crowd of helmetless Guardians suddenly erupted in a roar of whoops and shouts, the crew of the _Digeris_ frozen in place as the motley assortment of natives rushed at them, overly eager to speak and interact with the strangers. Fleeting panic soon gave way to joyous conversation and raucous laughter, the Guardians greatly fascinated with every little thing.

Liara and several Asari and Salarian crewmates had been all but swarmed by Warlocks, eager to learn all they could in regards to art, architecture, cultures new and old. Tali was entertaining a grouping of Hunters who, like a cat to a shiny object, were tinkering and toying with her omni-tool, testing out all the things it could do. And Wrex felt right at home amidst the Titans, the Krogan and several of the Turian crewmembers quickly bonding with their hosts over shared stories of courage and victorious battles.

All in all, as the Speaker surveyed the scene before him, a good first contact.

"You'll have to forgive them." The Speaker called to Garrus as he approached. "With the exception of the Awoken, every race we've encountered since first leaving our planet has been hostile to us."

"I doubt my crew minds all that much, especially given recent events. It's nice to not be attacked on sight, for once." Garrus shuffled uncomfortably for a moment, before asking, "If I may, why the giant ball?" The Turin pointing to the massive pale sphere that sat in the sky just above the City.

The man in the mask let out a long sigh. "Many questions you have regarding us will likely be answered soon enough. For now, let them enjoy one another's company."

As he said this, a bright blast of fire erupted from the gathering of Hunters surrounding Tali, the fire ball hurtling into the blue sky. The Quarian's response was to tuck the arm that had the omni-tool underneath her other arm, stumbling over herself as she tried to explain to her Captain that she didn't do that. In contrast, the Hunters, heedless of any danger, were excited by this new development, and began chanting. "Do it again! Do it again!"

Captain Vakarian's mandibles twitched in amusement. "I should probably go help her..."

He started forward, but was stopped by a hand placed lightly onto his upper arm. "She is in no danger, nor is anyone else. Guardians fight with all they have to protect what remains, let them revel in this new galaxy of unknown things you have brought them, just for a little while."

It wasn't long before a second fire ball emanated from Tali's omni-tool, this one intentional. At the same time, Tiil summoned the fiery silhouette of a firearm, the golden projectile launched from it colliding with the fire ball, causing an eruption of light that bloomed like a deadly flower in the afternoon sky, causing some to applaud.

Snippets of conversation could be caught amongst the various groups that had formed.

"So you can have it form into a blade, rather than having to carry a knife around? That's actually pretty handy..."

"I'm not lying, that thing was almost as big as your ship! It was chained up when we first saw it, but that monstrosity didn't stay shackled for long..."

"From what you've told us, these Protheans seemed to dominate most of the known galaxy. I wonder why we haven't found any of their relics in our corner of space..."

Camaraderie came fairly easily to the assorted species present, knowledge being exchanged and stories being told well into the evening. As the last light of the sun began to dip below the horizon, the clouds around the Traveler a brilliant purple, the Speaker spoke a single word. "Guardians."

All conversation ceased the moment the Speaker's voice reached their ears, the defenders of the City forming a loose semicircle around the masked man. Unsure of what was about to take place, the crew of the _Digeris_ joined their new friends and completed the circle, the Speaker standing in the center.

"Many of you have asked us questions concerning our origins and our history, and were given, I suspect, unsatisfactory answers. Tonight, I will tell you our story, if you would like to hear it."

Anticipation began to mount as the Speaker stood in silence, as if waiting for some kind of queue. When the sky began to grow dark, the Speaker tossed a handful of glimmer into the air, the sparkling pale blue cubes of energy swirling and reshaping as they took flight just above the main plaza before finally taking the form of a three dimensional Earth, the glimmer making up the continents, leaving the oceans as empty space.

"We began here," the Speaker started, "our humble home we called Earth, as simple, primal beings. But over time, we learned, adapted, evolved. Yet even as we advanced slowly towards greater things, we were combative, divisive amongst ourselves." The atlas of Earth highlighting this by scoring hundreds of little lines onto its surface, showing all of the different factions that once existed, long ago.

"Till one fateful day, when three courageous explorers, Jacob Hardy, Qiao, and Mihaylova left their home to seek out new and strange things." A ship could be seen leaving the confines of the planet, Earth fading away as the glimmer now took the form of Mars as it came into view. "We did not know it then, but on that day, Humanity would make a discovery that would forever change our way of life." The view of Mars quickly shifted to what looked like a helmet cam as its owner climbed up a hill of red sand. Cresting the top, everyone present was greeted with the sight of something familiar to some, but still foreign to others.

"The Traveler." The Speaker spoke the name with the utmost reverence. "One of the universe's great mysteries. We don't know where it came from, only that it was a cosmic entity of untold power, and, for reasons we may never fully understand, it chose us."

The programmable matter that had formed the image of the Traveler exploded outward, as they began to take forms that now showed the many advances Humanity made thanks to the pale sphere.

"A Golden Age began, the likes of which we had never before seen. Planetary terraforming and colonization occurred, the lifespan of humans tripled, we grew and prospered and advanced beneath the gracious hand of the Traveler."

The constant reshaping the glimmer was undergoing reached a fever pitch alongside the Speakers words, till suddenly the images of Humanity's advancements broke apart as they appeared to fall into a black hole.

"But it was not to last." The Speaker continued. "Too late, we realized that the Traveler was running from something."

The glimmer 'zoomed out' to show a representation of the solar system, a wave of shadows beginning to slowly creep toward the Sun, one planet at a time.

"It was the Darkness, cold and insidious. Nothing could slow its advance. There was no knowledge possessed nor technology obtained that could hope to stop it from consuming, from destroying all that we had built."

The diagram of the solar system now showed what looked like tiny ships leaving Earth.

"There were many among us who tried to flee, desperate to escape the crushing advance of the Darkness." The glimmer focused in on the fleet of ships as immense, clawed hands formed from shadow tore them apart. "Tragedy struck, for no one could outrun this menace. Yet, even in the face of such grim happenings, a Light could be found. It was from such terrible events that the Awoken emerged." The glimmer representing the ship graveyard took on a purplish tint, to signify the Reef.

The shapeshifting glimmer brought the view back to Earth, the planet now surrounded by a roiling ocean of thick shadows.

"The Darkness pushed us all the way back to our home, our birthplace." The glimmer twirling and changing again to show a skyline overshadowed by the Traveler, as the Darkness drew near. "And in that City, huddled beneath our god, we looked on as the Traveler made a final stand."

The view now became distorted and wild. Storms of fire. Tidal waves of infinite shadow. Towering clouds that fired off continuous streams of forked lightning even as they were consumed by immense singularities. Space and time seemed to warp and stretch as these titanic forces clashed in a terrible confrontation.

"In the end, the Darkness was defeated." The Speaker's voice had become a whisper, yet somehow everyone still managed to hear him. "But this victory came only through the sacrifice of the Traveler." The glimmer came to rest back onto the Speaker's palm as he made his way through the throng of humanoids, his destination the guardrail that overlooked the City and its silent protector. Thankfully, the ships parked there did little to take away the breathtaking view. "Yet, even as it lay there in the sky, dying, the Traveler thought of us." The Speaker held out his hand, his Ghost materializing just a few inches above it.

"The Ghosts were created in that final moment. Bearers of the Light, they seek out those worthy of the Traveler's legacy." He turned to face the large group that had followed him to his position near the edge of the Tower. "That is where Guardians come from, you see. They are chosen, blessed by the Traveler's Light, given power so that they might one day reclaim what was lost."

When the Speaker finished his story, silence pervaded the plaza. The Guardian's were quiet in remembrance, while the crew of the _Digeris_ held their silence out of surprise and awe. What exactly had they stumbled upon in this forgotten corner of the galaxy?

[][][][][][][]

Liara was so abuzz with energy, she was certain that sleep would be impossible.

A whole new civilization! A completely foreign culture uninfluenced by any race associated with the Council. Just as she had told Wrex before stepping out of the _Digeris_ onto 'Earth' for the first time, this was her specialty. Discovering new things, exploring new things, finding something that no one had ever found before, and by the _Goddess_ , what a find. For every question these people asked her, she asked two, so desperate was she to learn, to understand, to _absorb_ all she possibly could in regards to these people. Too many times, she was given the answer of 'you'll see soon enough'.

That had driven her mad to the point of wanting to ask Captain Vakarian if she could less than politely interrogate these 'Guardians'.

In hindsight, she was glad that she had waited. While she hardly needed a visual aid when it came to the histories of various cultures, due to her credentials as an archaeologist, the show of Light that began in the gloaming hours was nothing short of captivating. Concerning the content itself, however, the Asari was...skeptical.

It was such a fantastical tale, wasn't it? The kind of story you tell to your children, the kind of myth or legend that was to be treated as such. Golden ages and gods, science being turned on its head, planets being terraformed in a matter of days, evil masses of nebulous shadow. And yet, their hosts clearly considered them to be true, either that, or they were all incredibly skilled in theatre. Even so, did they really expect the crew to believe that the white orb hanging above the City was a go-, no, the _corpse_ of a god? True enough, they couldn't prove it to be anything else, but still...

With all these thoughts whirling through her head, Liara figured it would be hours before sleep found her, a notion that was refuted the instant her head hit the pillow.

Because the Tower lacked in anything resembling proper sleeping quarters for a group as large as theirs, the crew of the _Digeris_ simply remained on said ship, with Holliday agreeing to hold off on any more repairs till tomorrow, though she added, "If I find out whoever it was who came up with the plan to clog up my Hangar with _that_ is gonna get their head mounted on my desk."

Liara awakened some time after, how long she'd slept, she couldn't say. She was in the process of checking her omni-tool for the time when it occurred to her that any clock or time found on the ship was likely to not be synced up to this planet's current rotation around its' local star. She could go back to sleep...

Or she could snag one of the natives and grill them tirelessly about anything and everything regarding humans, EXO, and the Awoken, recording it all the while.

It's not that she didn't possess much of that information already. When it came to their culture and history, the humans were more than happy to hand over copies of their historical records, such as they were. While she could, and certainly _would_ pore over those same records that were more than likely inside the ship's database right now, she had always wanted to put a face to the ancient civilizations she had studied for so long.

This time, she truly could.

Exiting the _Digeris,_ the Asari could already hear a myriad of mechanical sounds bouncing all around the cavernous Hangar intermingled with someone's voice, likely the Shipwright, Holliday. They had certainly given her one hell of a workload, but she didn't seem to mind _too_ much, or at least, Liara hoped that was the case. One consolation, there were a number among the crew who could aid her in the repairs, once they woke up, that is.

As she left the Hangar behind, Liara noted that the sun had yet to fully rise, as most of the sky she could see was dark. Finally arriving at the center plaza, Liara was mildly surprised to find that a few other Guardians were already awake and alert. Holliday being up and at it this early, she could understand, but this trio appeared to be among those who had first showed up not long after _Digeris_ had crashed onto that beach.

Shepard was instantly noticeable, between her brightly colored robes and her hair the color of the fire she was capable of generating. While not quite as flamboyant, the teal and black robes of the EXO woman, Nyx-27, were still fairly striking, and Vaika was hard to miss with her shock of spiked white hair.

The three women stood at the guardrail, right where the Speaker ended that incredible story. They had yet to notice that they had company, and, while Liara normally would have berated someone else for doing this, she decided to record them, not to eavesdrop, but just to try and capture these mythical 'Guardians' when they appeared more at ease. Every moment she had captured before now that showcased the Guardians had always shown them as either guarded, stern, alert, or outright destructive.

She wanted at least one good clip of the Guardians sharing a more quiet moment.

She saw what her roving 'eye' saw via her omni-tool, carefully selecting the angle and zoom of the camera. It was a good angle, the silhouette of the trio was highlighted well against the backdrop of the Traveler, and would soon be further illuminated when the sun became visible for just a moment, before disappearing behind that same massive sphere.

Liara felt only a little bit of guilt as she recorded these Guardians without their knowledge, talking and laughing quietly amongst themselves.

The women caught the young archeologist entirely off guard when they began to sing.

It was soft at first, Nyx-27 starting it off, with Vaika and Shepard slowly joining in. The EXO of the group had a perfect singing voice, though that was to be expected, given her mechanical nature, she could probably just choose a different voice if she felt like it. Vaika sang a good soprano, only faltering when the song reached higher than most would be comfortable with. Shepard struggled with her huskier voice, though her alto was quite good, harmonizing well with her fellow singers.

Liara almost shut the recording off when the singers paused, believing the song to be over, when they had instead reached the zenith of the song, their voices reaching to even higher notes as they sang a near perfect harmony. At the same time, the sun had become visible between the horizon and the Traveler, melding flawlessly with what was taking place.

When it was over, both Liara and the trio of Guardians had to catch their breath.

 _Goddess, that was amazing._ Liara breathed.

[][][][][][][]

"They made it to Earth." Uldren Sov uttered, his voice quiet and subdued.

The Queen had already excused everyone from the throne room, but even so, it was the nature of his job to be overly cautious, particularly when it came to sensitive matters such as this.

"I take it the Guardians offered them aid?" Mara Sov queried.

Uldren rolled his eyes. "Pah, predictable, as always."

"Their dependableness in this case works to our benefit." The Queen stared at her brother intently. "Is she in a position to acquire what we seek?"

Uldren sighed and paused for thought before meeting his sister's gaze. "When she last checked in, yes. It has been some time since her last communique, the human shipwright likely has her on her toes, but I'm confidant she can obtain any pertinent information."

"Any information Is pertinent information." She chided him lightly. "We know nothing of these strangers. Such ignorance must not be permitted to continue."

The Queen's Hand bowed his head as he began to back away. "Of course. As soon as she contacts me, I will make sure you're made aware of it."

"Tread lightly, brother." The Queen called out to him. "Events have been set in motion, and it is impossible to see what all these events might bring to our doorstep..."

 **If you're curious as to the song our lovely ladies sang, it's Children of the Sun, by Thomas Bergersen.**

 **Sorry for the shorter chapter, this one was mainly designed to set up a number of different things that will have greater significance later. As much as I think that beginning bit with Oryx is rather cheesy, I wanted to tease a little in regards to what will be coming in the future. And no, I did not forget the Queen and her machinations, those will also come into play at a later date.**

 **Other than that, no much to say. I really enjoyed writing the bit where the Speaker tells the story. I had been planning from the beginning for him to do the 'visual aide' thing with glimmer. That's probably not how you use glimmer, but I don't care, I'll say the Speaker has super duper glimmer powers, you can't stop me.**

 **Concerning the question someone posed in regards to Rise of Iron...Well, after I leave the psych ward, I don't know how much time or money I'll have, so...It's all up in the air, I'm afraid.**

 **I had the whole weekend to write, which is why this chapter came up so quickly, but now I'll be more limited in my time to write, so bear that in mind, please.**

 **Till next time.**

 **EDIT FOR 10-20-2017: I know you people must hate me for being silent for so long. Without giving too much away, I'm now in a place where I have no access to the internet, but finally I have worked out a system with my dad (he's typing this right now) where I can write this story, mail it to him and he will upload it. I don't know how many of you are still reading this, but I intend to finish the story. To all those who are still reading this, thank you so much.**


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